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TRANSLATIONS OF EARLY DOCUMENTS
SERIES I
PALESTINIAN JEWISH TEXTS
(PRE-RABBINIC)
THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF THE
OLD TESTAMENT
^ THE
LOST APOCRYPHA OF
THE OLD TESTAMENT
THEIR TITLES AND FRAGMENTS
COLLECTED, TRANSLATED AND DISCUSSED
BY
MONTAGUE RHODES JAMES
LiTT.D., F.B.A., F.S.A.
Hon. Litt.D. Dublin ; Hon. LL.D. St. A/s-drews
Provost of Eton Collegk ; Sometime Provost
or King's College, Cambridge
523189
LONDON :
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING
CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE
NEW YORK: THE MACM I LEAN .COMPANY
1920
EDITORS' PREFACE
The object of this series of translations is primarily
to furnisli students with short, cheap, and handy
text-books, which, it is hoped, will facilitate the
study of the particular texts in class under com-
petent teachers. But it is also hoped that the
volumes will be acceptable to the general reader
who may be interested in the subjects with which
they deal. It has been thought advisable, as a
general rule, to restrict the notes and comments to
a small compass; more especially as, in most cases,
excellent works of a more elaborate character are
available. Indeed, it is much to be desired that
these translations may have the effect of inducing
readers to study the larger works.
Our principal aim, in a word, is to make some
difficult texts, important for the study of Christian
origins, more generally accessible in faithful and
scholarly translations.
In most cases these texts are not available in a
cheap and handy form. In one or two cases texts
have been included of books which are available
in the official Apocrypha ; but in every such case
reasons exist for putting forth these texts in a new
translation, with an Introduction, in this series.
W. O. E. Oesterley.
G. H. Box.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY —
THE SOURCES. PATRISTIC QUOTATIONS . ix
THE LISTS AND STICHOMETRIES : THEIR ORIGIN . xi
TEXTS OF THE GREEK, LATIN AND ARMENIAN
LISTS ...... xii
THE FRAGMENTS —
ADAM. APOCALYPSE, TESTAMENT, PENITENCE,
LIFE ...... I
EVE. GOSPEL OF EVE .... 8
SETH. ....... 9
LAMECH . . . . . . .10
NOAH . . . . . . .II
NORIA, WIFE OF NOAH .... 12
HAM. PROPHECY OF HAM . . . .15
ABRAHAM. APOCALYPSE AND TESTAMENT . l6
MELCHIZEDEK ...... I7
JACOB. TESTAMENT ..... 18
THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS. FRAGMENTS IN-
SERTED INTO THE TESTAMENT OF LEVI . I9
JOSEPH. THE PRAYER OF JOSEPH ". . 21
JANNES AND MAMBRES. THE PENITENCE OF
JANNES AND MAMBRES . . . 3I
A STORY OF MOSES AND THE MAGICIANS. 34
ELDAD AND MEDAD ..... 38
THE BOOK OF OG . . . . . 40
MOSES. TESTAMENT, ASSUMPTION, APOCALYPSE 42
DISCUSSION OF THE ASSUMPTION . , 43
BOOK OF THE MYSTICAL WORDS OF MOSES 51
OTHER MOSES-APOCRYPHA . . . 51
5OLOMON. SOLOMON AND SATURN , . 51
YU
VIU
CONTENTS
ELIJAH. APOCALYPSE. SUPPOSED QUOTATIONS
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
VISION OF HELL .
DESCRIPTION OF ANTICHRIST
THE COPTIC AND HEBREW APOCALYPSES
LEGENDS ....
JEREMIAH. PROPHECY (eTHIOPIC)
SPURIOUS QUOTATIONS .
EZEKIEL. FRAGMENTS OF THE APOCRYPHAL
BOOK
LEGENDS OF HIS MARTYRDOM, ETC.
DANIEL. SEVENTH VISION. PASSION. DREAM
BOOK
HABAKKUK
ZEPHANIAH. APOCALYPSE QUOTED BY CLEMENT
THE COPTIC APOCALYPSE
ZECHARIAH. ZACHARIAS. APOCALYPSE
THE SLAVONIC LEGEND
BARUCH. BARUCH-APOCRYPHA. UNIDENTIFIED
QUOTATIONS
EZRA, ESDRAS. SALATHIEL-ESDRAS
ESDRAS-APOCRYPHA
HEZEKIAH. TESTAMENT
LEGENDS ....
QUOTATIONS FROM APOCRYPHAL BOOKS, UNNAMED
IN — ■
CLEMENT OF ROME
" 2 CLEMENT " .
BARNABAS
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
HIPPOLYTUS
TERTULLIAN
PROPHECY OF HYSTASPES .
APPENDIX —
THE LADDER OF JACOB
THE LOST TRIBES
OTHER LEGENDS.
INDEX . , , ,
53
55
57
59
6i
62
62
64
69
70
70
72
74
76
11
79
80
81
85
87
88
88
90
93
92
93
96
103
106
107
INTRODUCTORY
The Sources.— Patristic Quotations
The object of this book is to collect in a form con-
venient to English readers the remains of some of the
apocryphal writings connected with the Old Testament
which have not survived in their entirety. That there
were many such books we know ; and the student may
find, scattered in dictionary articles, or collected in
such works as the — still unsurpassed — Codex Psetidepi-
firaphiis Veteris Testamcnli of John Albert Fabricius,
their names and fragments. But there is not a handy
English guide to this information, such as I now attempt
to supply.
It is impossible in most cases to assign anything like
a precise date to these writings ; the most we can say is
that they are pre- or post-Christian (and even that is
not always clear), and that they must have been in
existence before the time of the writer who quotes
them. That latter point at least is certain. But we
shall not be far out if we regard the first century before
and the first century after the Christian era (loo b.c-
A.D. loo) as covering the period during which most of
them were produced. Our uncertainty as to their
chronological order forbids me to attempt any arrange-
ment of them based upon date ; and I have preferred
the simpler plan of following the Biblical order of the
personages to whom they are attributed, or of whom
they treat.
Before, however, we consider any of them individually,
it will be well to form an idea of the sources from which
we get any information about them.
ix
X INTRODUCTORY
These are mainly of two kinds : lists of books, and
quotations.
The quotations from these books are for the most part
to be found in the writings of the Greek Ante-Nicene
Fathers. The so-called Apostolic Fathers, Clement of
Rome, Barnabas, and Hermas, are important contribu-
tors ; Justin Martyr and the other apologists give us
little. Clement of Alexandria and Origen are incom-
parably the richest sources ; Hippolytus has something.
In the fourth century the yield is far smaller : Epipha-
nius, a determined borrower from earlier writers, is not
to be despised ; but for our present purpose such writers
as Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom, the Grcgories, are
barren and useless. The next stratum that is at all
productive (and the last) is to be found in the Byzantine
chronographers, George the Syncellus, George Cedrenus,
Michael Glycas.
The Latins are throughout poorer. Tertullian and
Cyprian will be referred to; but Jerome hates apocry-
phal literature, and says so, while Augustine, a valuable
source of knowledge about some New Testament
Apocrypha, never, it so happens, quotes spurious Old
Testament literature at all. Yet, if Latin Fathers are
poor, we shall sec that Latin versions of some very queer
books were current, and have left traces in manuscripts.
Production of Apocrypha
We can readily understand, or at least imagine, the
state of mind which made the later Church writers chary
of quoting the extra-canonical books. For one thing,
the conception of canonicity had grown much clearer
by the fourth century ; the experience of the first three
centuries had shown the necessity of defining doctrine,
and consequently of stating clearly what books purport-
ing to be sacred were really to be considered authorita-
tive, and could legitimately be used in public worship.
Most of us have very little idea how many gospels,
revelations, histories or " acts" of apostles, and books
of prophecies were in circulation for which the claim wa?
INTRODUCTORY xi
set up that they should be so used. It was the recdg-
nized method of ])ushiiig a particular set of doctrines to
produce a writing under some venerable name, in which
the special tenets were openly or covertly advocated.
The fashion is on the wane now, yet we have heard of the
Book of Mormon, of Notovich's Buddhist Life of Christ,
and perhaps of an astounding work called the Archko
Volume. But though the methods of to-day are of
necessity different, it would not be very surprising even
now if a coterie of spiritualists were to publish, and to
gain some credence for, a Life of our Lord dictated
" automatically" by the spirit of one who had known
Him in the flesh; and this war has taught us that
apocr3'phal prophecies are by no means out of date.
It was, of course, specially important that the books
which professed to contain teachings of Christ or of
Apostles should be sifted ; but it was also necessary to
banish from the churches those which had been fathered
upon the prophets and patriarchs of the Old Testa-
ment. Many such had been made the vehicle of anti-
Catholic, and even of anti-Christian, teaching. We shall
encounter instances of these, though they are not so
common as writings that are legendary, or apocalyptic.
Lists and Stichometries
This necessity for definition led to the drawing-up of
lists of the sacred books, and then, naturally, of longer
lists, in which apocryphal books were included and
expressly reprobated. Such lists form our second main
source of knowledge about the lost writings. There are
three Greek lists, one Latin, and some in other languages,
especially Armenian, which will have to be noticed.
The Greek lists are known as the Stichometry of
Nicephorus, the hst of the Sixty Books, and that in the
Pseudo-Athanasian Synopsis of Holy Scripture. The
Stichometry of Nicephorus is a catalogue appended to the
chronography called of Nicephorus, Patriarch of Con-
stantinople (806-815), and it is called "Stichometry'
because it appends to the title of each book a statement
xu
INTRODUCTORY
of the number of stichoi or lines which it contained.
The Hne was the unit of payment for the professional
scribe, and was commonly of the average length of a
line of Homer, say sixteen syllables or thirty-four to
thirty-six letters. It is thought that this particular
catalogue must be appreciably older than the ninth
century, perhaps as old as the fifth or sixth ; but I do
not think its date is very important to us. It seems to
have been added to the chronography about 850, at
Jerusalem. The list in the Synopsis of Scripture , falsely
attributed to Athanasius, is very similar to that of
Nicephorus, but not, in the judgment of a good critic,
Theodor Zahn, copied from it. In the single section
which concerns us, the two are identical. The book in
which it occurs is of uncertain date, not earlier than the
sixth century.
The list of the Sixty Books is found appended in some
MSS., but not in all, to the Qiiscstioncs of Anastasius of
Sinai. By the Sixty Books the Canonical Scriptures
are meant. The names of these are followed by nine
more, described as "outside the Sixty" (Wisdom,
Ecclus., 1-4 Mace, Esther, Judith, Tobit), and these by
twenty-four more under the title ' ' apocrypha." Probably
this list also may be of the sixth or seventh century.
The three lists contain the following titles of Old
Testament apocryphal books : —
No. of
lines.^
. 4800
Nicephorus {Sy>wpsis)
Enoch
Patriarchs . . .5100
Prayer of Joseph . iioo
Testament of Moses . iioo
Assumption of Moses . 1400
Abraham . . . 300
Eldad and Modad . 400
Of EUas the Prophet . 316
OfSophoniasthe.Prophet 600
Of Zacharias the father
of John . . . 500
Pseudepigrapha of Baruch,
Ambacum (Habakkuk),
Ezekiel, and Daniel
Sixty Books.
Adam.
Enoch.
Lamech.
Patriarchs.
Prayer of Joseph.
Eldad and Modad.
Testament of Moses.
Assumption of Moses.
Psalms of Solomon.
Apocalypse of Elias.
Vision of Esaias.
Apocalypse of Sophonias.
Apocalypse of Zacharias.
Apocalypse of Esdras.
In Nicephorus only.
INTRODUCTORY xiii
The Latin list of apocryphal books is contained in a
document known as the Gclasian Decree, " concerning
books to be received and not to be received." It pur-
ports to have been issued by a Pope acting as the mouth-
piece of a Council of bishops ; in most MSS. the Pope is
Gelasius I (496), but in some Damasus (384), and in
some Hormisdas (523). The view expressed by its latest
editor, E. von Dobschiitz, is that it is not really a papal
document at all, but a compilation made in France in the
sixth century. That question is not settled. Whatever
its origin, the Decree gives us several very unusual names
of apocryphal books, and omits many, like Enoch, which
we should c-xpect to lind, and which we know were
current in Latin. Its contribution is as follows : — ■
The book, concerning the daughters of Adam,
of Leptogenesis .... Apocryphal.
The book which is called the Penitence of
Adam Apocryphal.
The book concerning the giant named Ogias,
who is stated by the heretics to have fought
with a dragon after the Flood . . Apocryphal.
The book which is called the Testament of
Job ...... Apocryphal.
The book which is called the Penitence of
Jannes and Mambres . . . Apocryphal.
The writing which is called the Interdiction
{or Contradiction) of Solomon . Apocryphal.
The Armenian lists collected by Zahn in 1893
{Forschungen, V. 109) are three in number.
1. Samuel of Ani [cir. 1179) mentions, among books
brought into Armenia about a.d. 591 by Nestorian
missionaries, the Penitence of Adam, and the Testament;
the latter may be that of Moses, but is more probably
that of Adam.
2. Mechithar of Airivank {cir. 1290) has a hst closely
resembhng the Greek ones. One section of it is headed
Secret Books of the Jews, and runs thus : —
(i) Book of Adam.
(2) Book of Enoch
xiv INTRODUCTORY
(3) Book of the Sibyl.
(4) The twelve Patriarchs, i. e. the testaments of the
twelve sons of Jacob.
(5) The Prayers of Joseph.
(6) The Ascension of Moses.
(7) Eldad, Modad.
(8) The Psalms of Solomon.
(9) The Mysteries of Elias.
(10) The Seventh Vision of Daniel.
This is essentially the list of the Sixty Books, substi-
tuting the Sibyl for Lantech, omitting the Testament of
Moses, and replacing the last four items by the Seventh
Vision of Daniel.
3. A second list in the same writer's chronicle, under
the year 1085, mingles some apocryphal titles with the
Canon of the Old Testament, viz. : — ■
The Vision of Enok — probably a late document
(translated by Issaverdens).
The Testaments of the Patriarchs.
The Prayers of Aseneth.
Tobit, Judith, Esther.
Ezdras Salathiel {i. e. 4 Esdras).
(Job, etc.).
The Paralipomena concerning Jeremiah Babylon {i. e.
the Rest of the Words of Baruch).
Deaths of the Prophets (a version of the Pseudo-
Epiphanian Lives of the Prophets).
Jesus Sirac.
This list consists entirely of books which still exist.
The Prayers of Aseneth seems to take the place of the
Prayer of foseph in the former list.
The above lists include nearly all the names which
will concern us. Some notice, however, will have to be
taken of other writings attributed to some of those
whose names occur in the hsts, e. g. Moses, and of books
fathered upon, or relating to, Eve, Seth, Noah, Ham,
Melchizedek, Hezekiah, as well as the ancient Persian
king Hystaspes ; and a collection of the passages which
early writers have quoted without naming their source.
THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
THE OLD TESTAMENT
THE FRAGMENTS
Adam
We hear of quite a considerable number of books
attributed to, or relating to, Adam : an Apocalypse, a
Penitence, a Testament, a Life, are the foremost. As to
the first three of these titles, there is uncertainty as to
whether they represent one, two, or three books.
Perhaps it will be possible to form an opinion when the
evidence has been set out.
The Apocalypse of Adam is expressly and certainly
quoted only once.
In the Epistle of Barnabas, ii. lo, we read : " But to
us he speaks thus : ' The sacrifice of God is a contrite
heart ; a savour of sweetness to the Lord is a heart
glorifying Him that hath formed it.'" Upon this the
Constantinople MS. has this marginal note : " Psalm 1.
and in the Apocalypse of Adam.'" The first clause is, of
course, familiar, occurring in Ps. 1. (li.) ;>, the second
is not from the Bible. Yet two early Fathers, namely,
Clement of Alexandria and Irengeus, quote it in this
form — Clement twice — always in connexion with the
passage Isa. i. ii, which, be it noted, Barnabas has also
quoted just before. We need not doubt the statement
that the words occurred in the Apocalypse of Adam.
They have to do with repentance, and plainly repent-
ance was a favourite topic in connexion with Adam.
The Gelasian Decree and an Armenian list, we have seen,
2 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
mention a Penitence of Adam. In the Gnostic book
called the Pistis Sophia, by the way, the word penitence
has a technical meaning ; it is applied to the hymns
sung by the being Pistis Sophia on her progress through
the spiritual world ; each hymn is called " a penitence."
Further, we have another passage which connects
together the ideas of repentance and of a revelation
made to Adam. George Cedrenus, a Byzantine chroni-
cler, says (ed. Migne, i. 41) : " Adam, in the 6ooth year,
having repented, learned by revelation concerning the
Watchers and the Flood and concerning repentance and
the divine incarnation, and concerning the prayers that
are sent up to God by all creatures at every hour of the
day and night, by the hand of Uriel, the angel that is
over repentance. In the first hour of the day the first
prayer is accomplished in heaven, in the second hour is
the prayer of angels, in the third the prayer of winged
things, in the fourth the prayer of cattle, in the fifth
the prayer of wild beasts, in the sixth the assembly [or
review) of angels and the discerning [or inspection) of
all creation, in the seventh the entering in of angels to
God and their going out, in the eighth the praise and
sacrifices of angels, in the ninth the prayer and worship
of men, in the tenth the visitations of waters and the
prayers of things in heaven and on earth, in the eleventh
the thanksgiving and rejoicing of all things, in the
twelfth the entreatings of men unto well-pleasing."
He goes on : " And in the 950th year Adam died, on the
very day of his transgression, and returned unto the
earth from whence he was taken, leaving thirty-three
sons and t\v<^nty-three daughters."
This horary of the day, and also that of the night,
we possess in various other forms. One is in Greek,
and has survived under the name, not of Adam, but of
ApoUonius (of Tyana), the famous thaumaturge of the
first century. The latest editor of it. Abbe F. Nau (in
Patrologia Syriaca, i. 2, Appendix, 1907), is of opinion
that it may really be attributed to ApoUonius or his
circle, and that it was transferred from his book to that
of Adam ; but his case is a weak one : the text is fuU of
THE OLD TESTAIMKNT 3
Christian touches, and the evidence that it was origin-
ally under Adam's name is earlier in date than any
that can be produced for Apolionius.
The horary seems also to have been known in the
Latin Church. Nicetas of Remesiana, writing in the
fourth century On the Merit of Psalmody, has this
sentence : " We ought not rashly to receive the book
that is entitled the Inquisition of Abraham, wherein it
is feigned that the very animals, springs, and elements
sang, inasmuch as that book is of no credit and rests
on no authority." I conjecture (and others agree) that
Inquisition of Abraham {Inquisitio Abriv) is a corrup-
tion of Dispositio {i. e. Testament) Ad;r.
We have it also in Syriac, where it is said to be from
the Testament of Adam. There are two Syriac versions,
edited and translated by Kmosko, in the volume of the
Patrologia Svriaca referred to above. One of these has
this introductory note : " When he was sick unto death,
he called Seth his son, and said to him : My son. He
that formed me out of the dust showed me and granted
me to put names upon the beasts of the earth and the
fowls of heaven, and showed me the hours of the day
and night, how they stand."
And more than once Adam speaks in the first person,
e. g. at the fourth hour of the night : " The Trisagion
of the Seraphim : thus I used to hear, my son, before
I sinned, the sound of their wings in Paradise, and after
T had transgressed the commandment I heard it not."
There is thus a prima facie case for thinking that the
Apocalypse, Penitence, and Testament of Adam, if not
dentical, at least contained a good deal of common
matter.
The Syriac MSS. of the horary, or some of them,
append to it other passages which purport to come from
the Testament. One of these is a prophecy of the
coming of Christ, addressed to Seth. Of this we have
two texts, the second very much amplified. After the
prophecy is another prediction that a flood will come
because of the sin of Cain, and that the world will last
6000 years after that. Then follows the statement :
B
4 THE LOST APOCkYPHA OF
" I, Seth, wrote this testament : Adam died and was
buried on the east of Paradise, over against the first city
that was built, named Henoch. He was buried by the
angels, and the sun and moon were darkened seven days.
Seth sealed the Testament and laid it up in the Cave
of Treasures with the gold, frankincense, and myrrh
which Adam brought out of Paradise, and which the
Magi are to offer to the Son of God in Bethlehem of
Judah."
This, of course, is throughout Christian, and the
mention of the Cave of Treasures links it up with a
whole series of Eastern books, such as the Book of Adam
and Eve (tr. S. C. Malan), the Cave of Treasures (ed.
Bezold), the Book of ike Rolls (Gibson, Stiidia Sinaitica,
viii.).
The last fragment has really no claim to be connected
with Adam at all. It is an account of the nine orders of
angels in which there is mention of David, Zechariah,
and Judas Maccab^eus.
If the horary and the prophecy were parts of the same
book, it was a Christian, or at least a fully Christianized
text, and not a very early one. Yet I hnd it difficult
not to suspect the existence of an early book behind it.
The last words of Tertullian's book On Penitence seem
to imply that he knew of some writing in which Adam's
praises of God after his repentance were recorded. He
says : " For, since I am a sinner of the deepest dye, and
not born for any end except repentance, I cannot easily
keep silence about it {i. e. repentance), and no more does
Adam — the beginner both of the race of men and of sin
against the Lord — when by confession he has been
restored unto his Paradise." No more may be meant
than that Adam, now that he is redeemed and restored,
sings praise to God ; but the other view has usually been
taken, and if it is correct it means that there was in the
second century a book that contained hymns uttered
by Adam after his fall and repentance. The phrase
quoted from the Epistle of Barnabas might well be a
fragment of such a writing.
Certain it is that legend was busy with accounts of
TJIE OLD TESTAMENT 5
the penitence of Adam : of tlie attempt made by him and
Eve to do penance apart for forty days in the waters of
the Tigris and Euphrates^an attempt frustrated by
Satan, who disguised himself as an angel and induced
Eve to come out of the water on the pretence that
God had forgiven and forgotten all. This story appears
both in the Eastern Book [or Conflict) of Adam and Eve,
and in the Tatin Life of Adam. The common source of
these widely divergent streams must lie far behind
both.
The Life of Adam has been mentioned. In some form
it has made its way into most of the vernaculars of
Europe, usually by means of the Latin version, which
is common in MSS. from the ninth to the fifteenth
century. It and its elder sister, or parent, the Greek,
may be read in English in Charles's Pseiidepigrapha,
and I need not analyze either further than to say that
the Greek and Latin both contain detailed accounts
of the Fall, and of the Death and Burial of Adam, while
the Latin also has, as noted above, something about
his Penitence. But these were not the only Lives of
Adam that were current. A text of a different kind is
quoted by George Syncellus in his Chronography, p. 5.
He says : I have been necessitated (by the silence of the
canonical Scriptures, he means) to give some explana-
tion of this matter [i. e. the dates of Adam's hfe),such
as other historians of Jewish antiquities and Christian
history have recorded out of the Lcptogenesis [i. e. the
Book of Jubilees) and the so-called Life of Adam^
though they may not seem authoritati\'e — lest those
interested in such questions should fall into extravagant
opinions. In the so-called Life of Adam, then, is set
forth both the number of the days of the naming of
the beasts, and that of the creation of the woman and
of the entrance of Adam himself into Paradise, and of
the precept of God to him about the eating of the
tree, and of the entry of Eve into Paradise with him,
and the story of the Fall and what followed it, as is
subjoined.
" On the ist day of the week, which was the 3rd day
6 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
of the creation of Adam and the 8th of the ist month
Nisan, and the ist of the month of April, and 6th of the
Egyptian month Pharmouthi, Adam by a divine gift
of grace named the wild beasts. On the 2nd day of the
2nd week he named the cattle ; on the 3rd day of
the 2nd week he named the fowls ; on the 4th day of the
2nd week he named the creeping things; on the 5th
day of the 2nd week he named those that swim. On
the 6th day of the 2nd week, which was, according to the
Romans, the 6th of April, and according to the Egyptians
the nth of Pharmouthi, God took a part of the rib of
Adam and formed the woman.
" On the 46th day of the creation of the world, the
4th day of the 7th week, the 14th of Pachon, and 9th
of May, the sun being in Taurus and the moon diametric-
ally opposite in Scorpius, at the rising of the Pleiads,
God brought Adam into Paradise on the 40th day from
his creation.
" On the 50th day of the creation of the world, and
44th of that of Adam, being vSunday the i8th of Pachon
and 13th of May, three days after his entry into Paradise,
the sun being in Taurus and the moon in Capricorn,
God commanded Adam to abstain from eating of the
tree of knowledge.
" On the 93rd day of the creation, the 2nd day of the
46th week, at the summer solstice, the sun and moon
being in Cancer, on the 25th of the month of June and
1st of Epiphi, Eve the helpmeet of Adam was brought
by God into Paradise, on the 80th day of her creation,
and Adam took her and named her Eve, which is inter-
preted Life. Therefore God ordained by Moses in
Leviticus, on account of the days of the separation (of
Eve from Adam) after her creation, out of Paradise,
that the woman should be unclean 40 days after the
birth of a male child, and 80 days after the birth of a
female. For Adam was brought into Paradise on the
40th day of his creation, wherefore also they bring male
children into the Temple on the 40th day according to
the Law. But for a female child she is to be unclean
80 days, both because Eve entered into Paradise on the
THE OLD TESTAMENT 7
8oth day, and also because of the inipureness of the
female compared with the male ; for when she is unclean
she does not enter the Temple until 7 days after, according
1(1 the Law of God.
"This we have copied shortly out of the so-called
Life of Adam for the information of students."
Now, although George Syncellus expressly distin-
guishes the Leptogenesis {Book of Jubilees) from the
Life of Adam, and subsequently gives quotations
avowedly made from it, the fact remains that practically
all that he quotes from the Life of Adam occurs in
Jubilees (iii. i-ii). The month-reckonings and the
astronomical details are not there, but all the facts
are. It has been held that the Life was an amplified
episode taken from Jubilees, or that it is merely another
name for Jubilees. ' The former is to my mind the more
likely explanation, for there is another bit of evidence
in favour of the separate existence of such a writing.
Anastasius of Sinai, writing at the end of the sixth
century, says {on the Hexanieron, vii. p. 895) : " The
Hebrews assert, on the authority of a book not included
in the Canon, which is called the Testament oj the Proto-
plasts, that Adam entered Paradise on the 40th day,
and that is the view also of a historian, the chrono-
grapher Pyrrho, and of many commentators."
This Testament may very well have been the same
as Syncellus' s Life. I think we need not greatly regret
that we do not possess this Life or Testament : we
probably have most of the matter of it either in Jubilees
or in the Greek and Latin texts I have described.
The Apocalvpse-Testanient would have been more
interesting, with its hymns of the repentant Adam and
the Messianic predictions which I do not doubt that
it contained. One more testimony to its existence must
be put on record. Epiphanius {Heresy, 26), treating of
the "Borborite" Gnostics, makes (in § 5) this quota-
tion : " Reading in apocryphal writings that ' I saw
a tree bearing twelve fruits in the year, and he said
to me, " This is the tree of life," ' the heretics interpret
it " in a way which need not be remembered. Later on
8 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
(in § 8) he says that they use "Apocalypses of Adam" as
well as other spurious books. The plural is merely
rhetorical. It has been assumed, plausibly enough,
that the quotation about the tree — which nearly co-
incides with Rev. xxii. 2 — is from the Apocalypse of
Adam ; but this is no more than an assumption. The
importance of the passage is that it gives fourth -century
evidence of the currency of the Apocalypse.
Upon the whole I incline (in spite of the evidence of
Samuel of Ani) to the opinion that there were two
outstanding Adam-books of Jewish origin. One, the
Apocalypse {Testament, Penitence), which is gone, except
for a few quotations ; the other the Life, which is
represented in its main features by the Latin and Greek
texts {Vita Adee et Evsc, and " Apocalypse of Moses").
Eve
The only book current under this name was a
" Gospel," and Epiphanius is the only authority for its
existence. In the same 26th Heresy (2, 3) he says :
" Others do not scruple to speak of a Gospel of Eve, for
they father their offspring upon her name, as supposedly
the discoverer of the food of knowledge by revelation
of the serpent that spake to her." " Their words," he
goes on, " like those of a drunkard, are fit to move
sometimes laughter, sometimes tears. They deal in
foolish visions and testimonies in this Gospel of theirs."
Thus : "I stood upon a high mountain, and I saw a
tall man and another, a short man, and I heard as it
were the voice of thunder, and drew near to hearken,
and he spake to me and said : ' I am thou and thou art
I. And wheresoever thou art, there am I, and I am
dispersed among all things, and whence thou wilt thou
canst gather me, and in gathering me thou gatherest
thyself.' " This is pantheistic stuff, of a kind, one would
suppose, very easy to write, if a model were furnished.
I give it a place here only for the sake of completeness :
it is no more an Old Testament p-pocryph than it is a
gospel.
THE OLD TESTAMENT
Seth
Seth was in like manner the ostensible author of many
Gnostic books. Rut there is a passage both in Synccllus
and Cedreuus which deserves to be quoted as possibly
preserving a notice of a lost writing under his name,
of less eccentric character. I quote Cedrenus (ed. Migne,
col. 8) : " Seth is recorded as the third son of Adam. He
married his own sister, called Asouam, and begat Enos.
Seth signifies resurrection. He was also called God,
because of the shining of his feicc, which lasted all his
life. Moses also had this grace, and so veiled himself
when he spoke with the Jews, for forty years. Seth
gave names to the seven planets, and comprehended the
lore of the movements of the heavens. He also pre-
pared two pillars, one of stone and one of brick, and
wrote these things upon them." (The rest of this
familiar story from Josephus is then given.) " He also
devised the Hebrew letters. Now Seth was born in the
230th year of Adam, and was weaned when he was
twelve years old, and in the 270th year of Adam Seth
was caught away by an angel and instructed in what
concerned the future transgression of his sons (that is
to say, the Watchers, who were also called Sons of God),
and concerning the Flood and the coming of the Saviour.
And on the fortieth day after he had disappeared, he
returned and told the protoplasts all that he had been
taught by the angel. He was comely and well-formed,
both he and those that were born of him, who were
called Watchers and Sons of God because of the shining
of the face of Seth. And they dwelt on the higher land
of Eden near to Paradise, living the life of angels, until
the loooth year of the world."
Dr. Charles may be right in regarding this statement
(about the revelations made to Seth) as an attempt to
transfer to him the wisdom and the position which
properly belonged to Enoch. Still, there is evidence,
at any rate, of Messianic prophecies attributed to Seth,
besides those which Adam revealed to him, and which
10 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
are recorded in the fragments of the Testament, and
more shortly in the Life.
In particular, the Arian author of a commentary on
St. Matthew, printed with the works of St. Chrysostom
and known as the Opus Imperfecttim, quotes a story
about the Magi, " among whom (in their own country)
was current a writing inscribed with the name of Seth,
concerning the star which was to appear and the gifts
that were to be offered to Christ." In the Armenian
Gospel of the Infancy, translated into French by P. Peeters
(1914), the Magi are represented as bringing with them
a Messianic prophecy by Adam which Seth had received
and handed on to his posterity. These are, of course.
Christian compositions, and not necessarily or probably
of early date.
Lamech
Lamech is the next title in the lists of Apocryphal
books which concerns us. There are two antediluvians
of the name recorded in Genesis : in iv. 25 ff. we have
the descendant of Cain, the author of the Song ; in
V. 25 ff. the descendant of Seth and father of Noah.
The former has been the subject of more legend than
the latter. The enigmatical Song has had explanations
invented for it, of which that which has attained the
widest currency is as follows. Lamech was blind, and
used to go out shooting with bow and arrow under the
guidance of the young Tubal Cain. The function of
Tubal was to tell the old man where the game was, and
direct his shot. One day Tubal was aware of something
moving in the thicket; he turned Lamech' s aim upon
it, and the creature fell dead. It proved to be their
ancestor Cain — covered with hair and with a horn grow-
ing out of his forehead — for such was the mark set upon
him by God. Lamech, on learning what he had done,
smote his mighty hands together in consternation, and
in so doing smote and slew Tubal Cain. Thus it was
that he " killed a man to his wounding and a young
man to his hurt."
This tale is current in a separate form in Slavonic.
THE OLD TESTAMENT ii
No one has made a better conjecture than that the lost
book of Lamech had this for its principal subject.
Many are the Jewish writers and mediiexal Western
commentators who tell the story, and through the
medium of the latter it became one of the regular episodes
to be illustrated in continuous Bible histories of the
twelfth and later centuries. In England it may be
seen on the west front of Wells Cathedral and in the
bosses of the nave of Norwich Cathedral ; abroad, on the
west front of Bourges, of Auxerre, at Toledo, at Orvieto— -
all these showing it in sculpture; while in MSS. it is
very frequently to be met, and in glass— in " Creation "
windows — is by no means uncommon.
Noah
The literature attributed to Noah and his family is
various. We hear of writings under his name and under
those of his wife and of one of his sons.
The Book of Noah seems nowhere to be mentioned by
any ancient writer; but pieces of it have been incor-
porated with the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees.
It must, therefore, be at least as old as the early part of
the second century B.C.
The portions of Enoch which Dr. Charles [Jubilees,
p. Ixxi) describes as Noachic are chapters ii.-xi. ; Ix. ;
Ixv.-lxix. 25 ; cvi.-cvii. ; and probably xxxix. 1. 2a ;
xli. 3-8 ; xliii.-xliv. ; liv. 7-lv. 2 ; lix., but this second
set has been modified.
Of these chapters, vi.-xi. contain the story of the
fall of the Watchers. The most tell-tale passage is
X. I, where the Most High sends an angel (Arsalaljur,
Istrael, or Uriel) " to the son of Lamech, saying, ' Go
to Noah and tell him in my name,' " etc.
Ix. is a vision, abruptly introduced, concerned largely
with the two monsters Leviathan and Behemoth.
Ixv. begins : "In those days Noah saw how the earth
bowed itself," etc. In 5 the first person appears, and
we read of " my grandfather Enoch." Ixvii. i, has,
" The word of God came to me and spake, ' Noah, thy
12 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF ■
lot is come up before me,' " etc. It is mainly a prophecy
of the Flood.
cvi., cvii. may possibly be the beginning of the Book.
They deal with the birth of Noah. But Enoch is the
speaker.
The second set of passages does not contain Noah's
name.
In Jubilees, the Noah-passages are vii. 20-39, ''*^'- '^~'^5-
The former gives Noah's commandments to his sons.
At V. 26 he begins abruptly to speak in the first person :
" And we were left, I and you, my sons."
The other (x. 1-15) tells how the demons afflicted
Noah's posterity, and how at his prayer all but a tenth
part of them were bound in the place of condemnation,
and how the angels taught Noah all the remedies for
the diseases which the demons had introduced, which
he recorded in a book and gave it to Shem.^ Parts of
this section exist in Hebrew in a Book of Noah, printed
by Jellinek and by Charles, and analyzed by Ronsch
in his Bnch der Jnhilden.
It will be seen that the book was of miscellaneous
character; partly legendary and haggadic, partly
apocalyptic : not unlike the Book of Enoch, in fact. As
to its original compass, we have no indication what-
soever, and the absence of references to it in literature
seems to show that it went out of sight and use at an
early date. Possibly the speeches of Noah in the
SibylUne Oracles (Book I.) may be derived from it, but
not probably ; there is little that is distinctive in them.
Noah : Noria his Wife
Epiphanius [Heresy, 26) has a good deal to say about
a Book of Noria, the wife of Noah, which was used by
the Borborite Gnostics. He abuses them for calling
her Noria instead of Bath Enos (which in Jubilees, iv. 28
is the name of Noah' s mother) , and relates (presumably
on the authority of the Book) that, as they say, " she
1 There is in Syriac a book of prognostics under Shem's name
recently edited by Dr. Mingana {Ry lands Library BMW:W).
THE OLD TL:STAI\IENT 13
often tried to be with Noc in the ark" (when it was
being built, I understand), " and was not permitted,
for the Archon who created the world wished to destroy
her with all the rest in the Hood ; and she, they say,
seated herself on the ark and set fire to it, not once or
twice, but often, even a first, second, and third time.
Hence the making of Noe's ark dragged on for many
years, because it was so often burnt by her. For, say
they, Noe was obedient to the Arclion, but Noria
revealed (proclaimed) the; l^i)})er Powers and Barbelo,
who is of the Powers, and ()})posed to the Archon, like
the other Powers, and taught that the elements that
had been stolen from the Mother above by the Archon
who made this world and the other gods, angels, and
demons who were with him, should be collected from
the Power that resides in bodies."
The matter about Barbelo and the Arclion is, of course,
Gnostic from the beginning; but it is curious to notice
that in later legend Noah's wife is often referred to as
trying to thwart him. A story is current in two widely
separate tongues, Slavonic and English, which shows
this.
Noah was enjoined to tell no man that he was making
the ark ; and, miraculously, his tools made no noise
when he worked at it. The devil, anxious to prevent
the building, went in human form to Noah's wife and
asked her where her husband spent his time so secretly.
She could not tell. He effectually roused her jealousy
and suspicion, and gave her certain grains. " These," he
said, " if put in Noah's drink, will force him to tell you
all about it." This happened : Noah gave away the
secret, and next day, when he went out to work, the
first blow of his axe resounded through all the country-
side. An angel came to him and rebuked him for his
want of caution. The ark had to be finished with wattle-
work.
Such is the tale as told and pictured in a beautiful
fourteenth-century EngHsh MS., Queen Mary' s Prayer-
hook (Brit. Mus. Royal 2. B. vii.). It is to be found
also in a Newcastle mystery play, and in Slavonic
14 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
countries, whose legends are collected in Dahnhardt's
Natiirsagen.
The form given there (i. 258) is worth setting down,
to demonstrate the identity of the two stories. It occurs
"in a late Russian redaction of the Revelations of
(Pseudo-) Methodius, with which (on this point) the
popular traditions of Russians, Poles, Hungarians,
Wotjaks, and Irtysch-Ostjaks, agree in essence."
Before the Lord sent the deluge. He commanded Noah
to build an ark secretly, and not to tell even his wife
what he was making. While Noah was at work in a
wood on a mountain, the devil came to him and asked
what he was doing, but Noah would not tell him. Then
the devil went to Noah's wife, and advised her to give
her husband an intoxicating drink, and draw the secret
from him. When Noah had taken it, his wife began
to question him, and he told her all. Next day, when
he went back to work, he found the ark all broken into
little pieces. The devil had destroyed it. Noah wept
night and day and lamented his sin. After that an angel
brought him a message of forgiveness and told him to
make the ark over again.
The trait of the noiselessness of the axe before Noah
betrayed the irxcrct also occurs in the Hungarian story
[I.e. 26q).
In some mystery-plays comic relief is obtained by
making Noah's wife a shrew and a scold, who will not
be induced to enter the ark until the last possible
moment.
This incident, in a more complete form, occurs in the
Russian legend just quoted. The devil asked Noah's
wife how he could get into the ark, which was now ready.
She could not think of a plan. But he told her that she
must refuse to enter the ark until the water had come
up, and must wait until Noah uttered the devil's name.
She obeyed, and however much Noah called, she would
not come, until at last he said, " Come in, you devil."
The devil immediately darted into the ark. The sequel
to this is portrayed in Queen Mary' s Prayer-book. Noah,
on seeing the dove return, says, Benedicite, The devil.
TIIK OTJ) TI':STAMENT 15
unable to bear the sacred word, bursts out through the
hull of the ark, but the hole he makes is stopped by the
snake, who thrusts his tail into it. Many forms of this
story are collected by Dahnhardt.
All this is far enough removed from the Book of Noria,
yei the legend I have told has this much in common
therewith, that it represents Noah's wife as opposed to
the making of the ark under the influence of a spiritual
being. Epiphanius is, as usual, confusing in his account
of the transaction, but we see at least that Noria is kept
away from the ark, wc know not on what excuse, and
we guess that she succeeds in hiding herself in it and
burning it.
I conjecture that the Gnostic writer may have taken
a simple folk-tale and made it a peg whereon to hang
his own very uninviting bag of doctrines.
Ham
A Prophecy of Ham is mentioned in an obscure and
unhappily defective passage of Clement of Alexandria
{Siromateis, VI. vi. fin.). He is quoting the heretic Isidore,
son of Basilides, and Isidore is speaking of the borrow-
ings of Greek philosophers from Jewish Scriptures. He
says: "For indeed I think that those who claim to
philosophize, if they could find what is the meaning of
the winged oak-tree and the embroidered mantle upon
it, and all that sacred allegory that Pherecydes devised,
drawing his material from the prophecy of Ham ..."
(the sentence is imperfect).
This is quite cryptic as it stands, and no great amount
of light is forthcoming. In the same book (ii. q) Clement
quotes Pherecydes as saying, " Zeus makes a mantle
great and fair, and on it broiders Earth and Ocean and
the house of Ocean," where the words for mantle and
hroider are those used by Isidore. And a papyrus
(Grenfell and Hunt, Greek Papyri, Series II, No. 11) has
given us a little more of the same passage of Pherecydes ;
but it does not explain the winged oak-tree.
i6 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
The best opinion that is current so far about the
prophecy of Ham is that of Eisler [Weltenmantel, etc.,
19 lo), who connects it with the hterature that went
under the name of Hermes Trismegistus. The writers of
that school and the alchemists who came after them
(we have a good many Greek alchemical writings)
professed to see a connexion between the name of
Ham (Cham) and their science of Chemeia : and Chem
figured as an interlocutor in some of the written dia-
logues, and is mentioned under the name of " the prophet
Chymes," or " Chemes." The symbohsm employed in
such circles is likely to have been strange and obscure :
it probably conveyed in esoteric fashion their views on
cosmogony.
Abraham
Of Abraham a word must be said. The lists give us
the name of Abraham simply, and Nicephorus attaches
to it the number of 300 lines ; the MSS. also read 1300
and 3300, but 300 is best supported. The Apostolic
Constitutions mention apocryphal writings under the
names of the three patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) ;
Epiphanius says that the Sethians used an Apocalypse
oj Abraham which was " full of all manner of wickedness,"
and Origcn gives something like a quotation from an
Abrahamic book, in these terms {on Luke, Horn. 35) :
" We read — at least if any one likes to accept a writing
of the kind — of the angels of righteousness and of
iniquity disputing over the salvation or perdition of
Abraham, each band wishing to claim him for its own
company." He then refers to a passage in the Shep-
herd of Hernias. We have these Homilies on Luke
only in a Latin version, and I have little doubt that
the original of this passage was fuller — apocryphal
quotations being apt to be slurred over, if not wholly
expunged, by orthodox fourth-century translators.] I
also suspect that the point of the quotation has been
THE OLD TI'ISTAAllCNT 17
spoilt, and that it was not Abraham's soul, but another,
about whom the angels disputed.
Passing from these three references to extant literature,
we find two Abraham books, one called an Apocalypse,
the other a Tcshimciit, of Abraham. The Apocalypse
exists only in Sla^•onic : it is accessible in a translation
recently issued by the S.P.C.K., and is of considerable
antiquity and great interest. The Testament exists in
Greek, Coptic, Arabic, Ethiopic, Slavonic, Roumanian,
and was edited by me in 1892.^ All the texts of it
have been more or less tampered with. The plurality
of versions and revisions is in favour of the book's
antiquity, and it docs contain an episode which might
be identihcd with that of Origen's quotation. The
Apocalypse does not. We have seen, moreoever, tha-t
books of the Three Patriarchs are mentioned in the
fourth century : and the Icstamcnts of Isaac and Jacob,
especially that of Isaac, have undoubtedly quite ancient
elements. With them this, of Abraham, is found in
Coptic, Arabic and Ethiopic.
So I think the Testament represents an early book,
and am sure that the Apocalypse is early. Which of
them is the text meant in the lists I will not undertake
to say. They do not differ in length so much that we
can decide from the stichometry.
Melchizedek
Connected with Abraham is Melchizedek. This
mysterious figure interested many early thinkers, as it
did the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and a sect
who identified him with the Holy Spirit was either
christened or christened itself Melchizedekian. Legend,
both Jewish and Christian, was busy with him, identi-
fying him sometimes with Shem, sometimes with a
son of Shem, and sometimes finding other pedigrees
for him. Though we do not hear from other writers
of books specially concerned with him, we have two
1 A translation of the Coptic of the Testaments of the Three
Patriarchs is promised by Mr. Gaselee for the present series.
i8 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
stories of Melchizedek which almost rank as independent
apocrypha. One is in Greek, printed with the works
of St. Athanasius, and setting forth that Melchizedek
was the son of King Melchi and Queen Salem, and how
he was converted to a belief in the true God, and at
his prayer his whole kindred was swallowed up in the
earth at the moment when his heathen father was about
to sacrifice his other son Melchi to idols; how Mel-
chizedek then lived as a solitary on Mount Tabor until
Abraham, divinely guided, found him.
The other is a long episode attached in some MSS.
to the Slavonic Secrets of Enoch. It will be found, in
English, in Dr. Charles's edition, pp. 85-93. It is of
great interest. It tells first of the succession of Ma-
thuselam to the priesthood vacated by Enoch, then of
his death and the accession of Nir, son of Lamech, and
next of the miraculous birth of Melchizedek from
Sopanima, wife of Nir. Melchizedek, hke the mys-
terious Child of Rev. xii., is caught away to Paradise
forty days after his birth, and thus saved from the
Flood. Nir dies, and the priesthood remains vacant.
A short account of Noah and the Flood ends the whole.
Little attention has hitherto been paid to this story.
Both it and the Greek one described above are, in their
present form. Christian.
Jacob
A Testament of facoh, as has been said, exists in
Coptic and other Eastern languages. Besides this
(which seems to be an abridged form of a longer original) ,
something called a Testament of facoh is found in a
Greek MS. at Paris (Coislin, 296); but it is merely an
extract from the 49th chapter of Genesis. Further, a
sixteenth-century writer, Sixtus Senensis, in his Bihlio-
theca Sancta, has an entry (p. 70) worth transcribing :
" There is current in print a Testament of the patriarch
Jacob which Gelasius in the 29th Distinction (of the
Decretum of Gratian) reckons among the books of
apocryphal character." Hejiere refers to the Gelasian
THE OLD TESTAMENT 19
Decree, where many copies read wrongly Tesiamenhim
Jacohi for Test. Jobi. What this printed Testament of
Jacob, current in Italy in the sixteenth century, may
have been, I have not been able to detemiine with
certainty. There is just the chance that, as the Vision
of Isaiah was printed in Latin more than once and
wholly forgotten, so some really apocryphal work may
havt^ had a brief life ; but it is far more likely that some
rechauffe of the Blessings of Jacob, circulated with the
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, is meant. Such
a thing is, in fact, prefixed to some of the old translations
of these Testaments, e. g. the English one printed by
Richard Day.
There is, besides, a proper apocryph of Jacob in the
shape of the Ladder of Jacob, extant only in Slavonic,
and translated by Bonwetsch in the Gottingen Nach-
richten for 1900, in two recensions. I shall reproduce
this in English in the A])pcndix to this volume.
The Twelve Patriarchs. Levi
The Twelve Patriarchs have their well-known Testa-
ments, of which Dr. Charles has given us an indispensable
edition. It seems as if behind the present Testaments
there lay, in some cases, earlier documents of which
we have glimpses. Eor instance, the story of the wars
of Jacob is found in Jubilees and in Jashar, as Dr.
Charles sets forth. Then, again, we have a double
narrative in the Testament of Joseph. In that of Levi
a different phenomenon occurs. A tenth -century MS.
at Mount Athos {e. of Dr. Charles) makes two long
insertions in the text : (a third, in the Testament of
Asher, is said to be wholly Christian, and is not printed
by Dr. Charles). These two passages, the first of which
is not as yet translated, merit notice here.
(i) Test. Levi H. — " And as I kept sheep in Abel-
maoul, a spirit of understanding from the Lord came
upon me, and I beheld how all men had corrupted their
ways and how sin was builded upon a wall (so far the
ordinary text : now the Athos MS. continues) :
c
20 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
" Then did I wash my garments and cleansed them in
pure water, and I washed myself wholly in living water.
And I made all my ways straight. Then lifted I up
mine eyes and my face to heaven and opened my mouth
and spake, and spread out the fingers of my hands and
my hands unto truth before the holy [plural). And I
prayed and said : Lord, thou knowest all hearts, and
all the thoughts of men' s minds thou alone perceivest [and
now my children with me],^ and give me all ways of
truth. Put far from me, O Lord, the unjust spirit
and the spirit of evil thoughts, and fornication and
pride turn thou away from me. Let there be shown
me, O Master, the holy spirit, and give me counsel and
wisdom and knowledge and strength to do such things
as please thee and to find grace in thy sight and to
praise thy words. Be with me, O Lord, and let not any
Satan prevail against me to make me err from thy way.
And have mercy on me and bring me to thee to be thy
servant and worship thee rightly : let a wall of thy
peace be round about me, and a shelter of thy might
cover me from all evil ... (a corrupt word Trapahwa) :
wherefore also blot out lawlessness from under heaven,
put an end to lawlessness from off the face of the earth.
Purify my heart, O Master, from all (un)cleanncss and
I will lift up (my hands) to thee ; and turn not away
thy face from the son of thy servant Jacob. Thou,
Lord, didst bless Abraham my father and Sarah my
mother, and saidst that thou wouldest give them a
righteous seed, blessed for ever. Hearken also to the
voice of thy servant Levi, that I may be near thee, and
make me a partaker in thy words, to do true judgment
for ever, even me and my sons, unto everlasting genera-
tions, and remove not the son of thy servant from
before thee (from thy face) all the days of eternity.
And I kept silence, though I yet prayed."
This is a corrupt and incoherent text, a cento of rather
ordinary supplications without a leading thought.
The vocabulary of it agrees well enough with that of
1 Intrusive, or corrupt: query " And now, O Lord, bless me
and my children with me," etc.
THE OIJ) TESTAMENT 21
the Testaments, so that it need not, and I think should
not, be regarded as a late compilation ; indeed, such a
supposition is pretty well put out of court by the fact
that the second long insertion is undoubtedly anticjue.
The idea readily occurs to one that there may have
been Testaments of Levi, and perhaps of one or two
other leading patriarchs, a good deal longer than the
present ones, composed before the rest of the Testa-
ments, and that the notion of completing the set of
twelve entailed, among other things, the compression
of existing texts.
The second insertion, part of which is also found in
Aramaic, is translated in Appendix II of Dr. Charles's
Testaments (1908, p. 22S). The greater portion is put
in — quite incoherently — after Levi xviii. 2. The Ara-
maic pieces begin at an earlier point than the Greek
and carry the story on some way beyond it. A large
part of the text has to do with ritual observances, and
has much in common with Jubilees xxi. It has injunc-
tions given by Isaac on the authority of Abraham and
the Book of Noah (probably a mythical one) to Jacob
and Levi, on the ordination of the latter to be priest.
After that we have details of the birth of Levi's children,
and the text (Aramaic) ends in a paranetic poem
addressed by Levi to his sons. Throughout he speaks
in the first person. Dr. Charles regards this fragment
as an original source both of the Testaments and of
Jubilees, in which case it would have to be as old as
the third century B.C.
The Prayer of Joseph
And now we come to the consideration of a very
interesting lost book, the Prayer of Joseph. The lists
have told us that it contained iioo lines — as many as
are assigned to Wisdom ; and we have certain fragments
of it preserved by Origen, which must be transcribed
and expounded in detail.
The first and longest is in Origen's Commentary
upon John, ii. 31.
22 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
He is speaking of John the Baptist, and, says he :
" It will not be out of place to add a notion of our own
about him. When we read the prophecy of him,
' Behold, I send my angel before thy face,' etc., we
reflected if by chance one of the holy angels being
upon service were not sent down as a forerunner of
our Saviour. It would not, indeed, be surprising if,
when the firstborn of all creation became incarnate,
for love of man, some should have become emulators
and imitators of Christ, and embraced the opportunity
of ministering to His kindness to men by means of a
like body. . . . Now if any one accepts among the
apocrypha current among the Hebrews, what is entitled
the Prayer of Joseph, he will derive from it exactly this
teaching, expressed in plain terms : that those who
from the beginning possessed some special excellence
beyond men, and were greatly superior to all other
souls, have descended from the estate of angels into
human nature. Jacob, at any rate, says : ' For I
Jacob that speak unto you, I am also Israel, an
angel of God and a ruling spirit, and Abraham and
Isaac were pre-created {TrpoeKTio-Orjcrav, a word only
found here) before any work. And I Jacob, that am
called by men Jacob, yet my name is Israel, that am
called by God Israel, a man seeing God, for I am the
first begotten of every living thing that is quickened
by God.'" And he continues: "And I, when I was
coming from Mesopotamia of Syria, Uriel the angel of
God came forth and said that I had come down (came)
to earth and tabernacled among men, and that I was
called by name Jacob. He envied me and fought with
me, and wrestled with me, saying that his name should
have precedence of my name and of the angel that is
before all {or that his name and the name of the angel
that is before all should have precedence of my name).
{All is singular, and should perhaps be rendered ' before
every (angel).') And I told him his name, and in what
order ^ he is among the sons of God, saying : ' Art not
thou Uriel, the eighth from me, and I am Israel, an
^ Edd. ir6aos, but ir6a-Tos {quotus) is certainly to be read.
THE OLD TESTAMENT 23
archangrl of the j)u\vcr of llu: Lord, and a captain of
captains of thousands among the sons of God ? Am I
not Israel, the first minister before the face of God?'
And I called upon my (lod by the inextinguishable
name." " It is likely" (Origen goes on) " that if these
words were really spoken by Jacob, and therefore re-
corded, that the incident ' He su[)]:)lantcd his brother
in the womb ' (Hos. xii. 3) happened intelligently (con-
sciously, fri'i'£T<T)rr)." He then speaks a little al:)out
Jacol) ami i'^sau, hinting at their jxjssible pre-existence,
and conchuU'S : " But we have made a considerable
digression in taking up the matter of Jacob and calling
in as evidence a writing not lightly to be despised, to
make somc^thing more credible of the theory about
John, which maintains that he, according to Isaiah's
word, being an angel, took a body in order to bear
witness to the Light." This ])assage is summarized
by Jerome on Hcv^'^ai.
The second fragment is in the Philocalia, cap. xxiii.
15, taken from the Commoitayy on Genesis iii. It is
partly to be found in Eusebius' Pr{fp. Evang., VI. 11,
and Procopius on Genesis quotes from it too. The topic
is astrology.
For, as we showed before that the fact that God
knows what every man will do is no obstacle to free-
will, so neither do the signs which God has appointed
for the giving of information imj)ede freewill : but, like
a book containing future events in prophecy, the whole
hea\-en — the book of God, as it is — may contain the
future. Wherefore in the Prayer of Joseph this word
of Jacob may be thus understood : ' P'or I have read
in the tablets of heaven all that shall befall you and
your sons.'
(19) " But if Jacob says he has read in the tablets of
heaven what is to befall his sons, and upon this point
some one objects to us that the opposite of what we
have said is shown by the Scripture (for w^e were saying
that man has no apprehension of the signs, whereas
Jacob says he has read in the tablets of heaven), we shall
say in defence that our wise men, aided by a spirit
24 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
excelling human nature, are taught secret things not
humanly but divinely, as Paul, who says, ' I heard
unspeakable words,' etc. . . . And, besides, Jacob was
greater than man, he who supplanted his brother, and
who declares in that same book from which we quoted,
' I read in the tablets of heaven-' that he was a captain
of captains of thousands of the power (host) of the Lord,
and had of old the name of Israel : which fact he recog-
nizes while doing service in a body, being reminded of
it by the archangel Uriel."
The next allusion is in the Annals of Michael Glycas,
a Byzantine chronicler of the twelfth century. He
has given a resume of the story of Tobit, and when he
comes to the name of the archangel Raphael, he says,
" And this name Raphael thou hast already learnt out
of Tobit, but that of Uriel, as the great Psellus (Michael
Psellus, 1081) says, neither the Old nor the New
Testament makes known to us. But there is a Hebraic
book, unknown to most men, entitled the Prayer of
Joseph, where his father Jacob is introduced as talking
with this angel [Raphael ] ; though now the book, like
the other apocryphal writings, is rejected and set at
nought by the Hebrews." The bracketed name of
Raphael must be wrong. The reference to Psellus,
much of whose writing remains inedited, has never been
followed up. Very likely he depended upon Origen tor
his knowledge of the Prayer.
In the Ascension of Isaiah, iv. 22, a number of pro-
phetic writings are mentioned : the twelve minor
prophets are enumerated, and then " the words of
Joseph the Just, and the words of Daniel." Here it is
generally assumed that the Prayer of Joseph is meant.
The passage has been thought to be an addition to the
Ascension : dX latest it would be of the third century,
at earliest late in the first.
In the Revue Bcncdictin Dom Morin has an article
on the library of the Abbey of Gorze in the eleventh
century. To it he appends a note upon a collection of
Latin homilies attributed to a certain John, which he
had seen in MSS. then extant at Reims and at Arras.
THE OLD TESTAMENT 25
(Are they still in being?) "I noticed," he says, "a
mention of the angel Uriel ; on ]). 62 are the words,
Et jingnavit cum angelo Oriel (and he fought with the
angel Uriel)." I do not see that this can refer to any
one but Jacob, and it is not independent of the Prayer
of Joseph. It is quite likely, of course, to have been
derived from Origen, who, when all is said, remains
our sole source of knowk'dge of the contents of the book.
A very lengthy comment might be written upon these
fragments. I will try to compress mine.
First, the title. Prayer of Joseph, is peculiar. No
other separate book is so named, though a good many
prayers occurring in Scriptural books are dignified with
special titles, and some were current separately. Such
arc the Prayers of Moses (Ps. xc), of Habakkuk, of
Solomon in Kin^s, and in Wisdom, of Jesus son of
vSirach (Ecclus. li.), of Azarias in the furnace (Dan. iii.
(LXX)), of Esdras (4 Esdr. viii), of Baruch {Apoc. Bartich),
of Manasseh. But these are not whole books. The
nearest parallel is the case of the Book or History of
Asenath, which the Armenian list places in the stead of
the Joseph book, and calls the Prayer (prayers) of
Asenath. zA Greek MS. of it has a similar title. Con-
fession and Prayer of Asenath. The fact that Asenath
replaces Joseph suggests the possibility of an integral
connexion between the books (so Mgr. Batiffol). I
have tried to establish one, but with little success. The
most one can say is that in Asenath a sort of divinity
hangs about both Jacob and Joseph : that Levi " saw
writings written in the heavens," that the angel who
visits Asenath is " captain of the host of the Lord God,
leader of all the army of the Most High." He has a
name " written in heaven in the book of the Most High
by the finger of God, before all. And the things written
in that book are ineffable, such as men may not speak
or hear." Joseph is described as the son of the Most
High. The description of Jacob says that his arms
were as those of an angel, his thighs and legs and feet
like a giant's, and he like a man that fought {or might
fight) with God. I think it quite probable that the
26 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
writer of this was acquainted with the Prayer of Joseph ;
but I do not see (as I should hke to see) evidence that
the one book has drawn much from the other or is
modelled upon it.
All that we can fairly gather from the title is that the
book must have contained a prayer or prayers of con-
siderable bulk uttered by Joseph (as Ascnaih contains a
long prayer of Asenath). On what occasion it was
offered, whether in the pit, or in prison, or on his death-
bed, there is no certainty.
From the fragments we can gather one point of
importance. Jacob says, " I that speak unto you, I
have read what shall befall yon and your sons." He
is therefore addressing some or all of his descendants,
and he does so in the terms used by the Patriarchs in
the Testaments when they are on their deathbeds.
Also, I think, the revelation of his angelic nature is one
which would naturally be reserved until the end of his
life. Further, in Gen. xlviii., where the blessing of
Joseph's sons is related, there are coincidences of ex-
pression : " My God," and " When I was coming from
Mesopotamia of Syria." Thus the book contained a
dying speech of Jacob, of which we have a portion. I
am tempted to think that it was addressed to Joseph
and his sons Ephraim and Manasseh. The grounds are
naturally slight : (a) We already have, in Genesis xlix.,
the full address of Jacob to the twelve ; {b) there are
coincidences of language with the episode of Joseph's
sons in Gen. xlviii.
The matter and doctrine of the fragments occupy us
next. The pre-existence of Jacob as an angel, and of
Abraham and Isaac is here taught in the crudest way.
The terms, however, are confusing. If Jacob is first-
begotten of every living thing, is he senior to Abraham
and Isaac ? One must doubt whether the writer had
thought this out. He is bent on emphasizing the
dignity of Jacob, and finds himself forced to mention
the two other Patriarchs.
On pre-existence of souls in general a good deal has
been written : an essay by F. C. Porter in 0. T. and
Tin-: fUJ) TESTAMENT 27
Semitic Studies in Memory of President Harper, is a
notable contribution to the sul:)jcct. His thesis is that
tlie Jewish doctrine of the pre-existence of ordinary
human souls docs not imply a belief in a full personal
existence of them. We, however, are concerned with
the jH-rsonal ])re-existence of certain individuals. Rab-
binic literature has a little light to throw on this. The
Midrash Rahha, L § 4, gives (as do other books) a list
of things that were created before the world. The
Torah and the Throne of (ilory (Prov. viii. 22, Ps. xciii.
2) : these were created already ; four more came into
God's mind to be created : the Patriarchs (Hos. ix. 10 :
I saw your fathers as the first-ripe in the fig-tree at her
first time), Israel (Ps. Ixxiv. 2), the Sanctuary (Jer. xvii.
12), the name of Messiah (Ps. Ixxii. 17). Sometimes
Repentance is added. We find the list also in Midrash
Tanchuma and the Pirkc R. Eliezer (where the phrase is
" the spirits of the fathers"). It docs not quite come
up to our text in precision of statement. Older books
can be cited. Enoch xlviii. 3, says of the Son of Man,
" Before the sun and moon and the signs were created,
before the stars of heaven were made, his name was
named before the Lord of Spirits." Moses {Assump-
tion, i. 14) says of himself, " God foresaw [not created)
me before the foundation of the world that I should be
the mediator of his covenant."
Ideas about pre-existence were in the air, and it is
even possible that the words of Christ in John viii. 58,
" Before Abraham was, I am," are to be regarded as
showing a consciousness, and containing a contradiction,
of such beliefs.
As to the phrase " first-begotten of cxevy living
thing," one O.T. text may be cited as a parallel, Exod. iv.
22, "Israel is my firstborn son"; but far nearer is
St. Paul's phrase in Col. i. 15, " the firstborn of every
creature."
In the Shepherd of Hermas, Vision III. 2, 5, we read
of the (seven) holy angels who were first created.
Clement of Alexandria mentions them rather fre-
quently, c. g. in Str. VI. 143 : " Seven are they that
28 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
have the greatest power, the first begotten rulers of
the angels." We also find them in the Pirkc R. Eliezer,
4 : " The seven angels that were first created."
" That his name should have precedence over my
name and over that of the angel before every ..."
Schurer would read, " and before every angel" (Trpo toC
TravTOcr riyye'Aou for rov Trpo Traj'Torr dyye'Aon), but I do not
think the tc.\t can be mended so easily. It depends
on one sole MS., and I fear it is defective. More im-
portant is it to notice another Pauline parallel : " He
hath given him a name which is above every name,"
etc. No Jewish Scripture supplies a better.
Uriel is the wrestling angel. This, again, is peculiar.
The uniform Rabbinic tradition says that it was Michael,
Pseudo-Philo [Bibl. Antiq., XVHI. 6) that it was the
angel who is over the praises, the Ladder of Jacob that
it was the archangel Sarckl : in Pirkc R. Eliczcr the
wrestling angel gives his own name Israel to Jacob. I
do not trace the reason for choosing Uriel. He figures
a good deal in Enoch : in xx. 2 he is the angel over the
world and over Tartarus ; he guides Enoch to remote
regions and shows him the movements of the heavenly
bodies. He is one of the four great angels, Michael,
Gabriel, and Raphael being his compeers. To Adam
he comes as the angel over repentance and tells him of
the hours of day and night. To Esdras he shows
visions. In the Apocalypse of Peter (and Sib. Orac. II )
he brings souls out of Hades to judgment. In the
Testament of Solomon we read of a demon who was an
offspring of Uriel, and Uriel is summoned to control
him.
He appears in our fragment in a somewhat unfavour-
able light, seeming to take advantage of Jacob's (Israel's)
confinement in a human body to gain a superiority
over him, which he (no doubt) hopes to maintain when
Jacob's earthly life is over.
Of the phrases " come down to earth" and " taber-
nacled among men," the second is paralleled by
Baruch iii. 38, Rev. xxi. 3, and especially Ecclus. xxiv.
8-10 : the first has its closest illustration in Eph. iv. 9-10.
THE OLD TESTAMENT 29
Uiii'l the eighth iKmi inr." Another contradiction
of tradition. Israel appears here as the first of a band
of seven, all of whom were before Uriel. Uriel is else-
where always one of the first se\en, and usually of
the tirst four. The place here claimed by Jacob-Israel
is that assigned bv almost universal consent to Michael.
" And I called on my God by the inextinguishable
name." Does this begin a fresh sentence and mean
that after thus addressing Uriel, Jacob called upon
God ? or is it to be connected with the last clause,
meaning that, in the discharge of his functions in
heaven, Israel invoked Him ? In this latter case the
greatness of the Name would l)e the important point,
and the intention would be to show how exalted was
Jacob's ministry. In spite of the fact that the verb is
in the aorist and not in the imperfect, I incline to the
latter interpretation. The expression " inextinguish-
able name" I have not as yet found elsewhere, though
I believe it to exist.
These are the chief points in the first fragment. The
second is : "I read in the tablets of heaven all that
shall befall you and your sons."
The tablets of heaven figure in three books, Enoch
(four times) Jubilees (over twxmty times), the Testa-
ments of the Twelve Patriarchs (thrice).
The Enoch passages are Ixxxi. i, 2 (the book of the
deeds of all men ... to the remotest generations),
xciii. 2 (they contain the destinies of the righteous),
ciii. 2 (the reward of the righteous), cvi. 19, cvii. i
(generation after generation will transgress).
In Jubilees, iii. 10, the laws of the purification of
women are written in the heavenly tablets, and in
sixteen other passages decrees or legal enactments are
registered in them. In three cases events are recorded
as they happen, and in two others, future matters. But
to us the really important passage is xxxii. 21 ff. Jacob
at Bethel (not on his flight in Gen. xxviii., but later in
his life) " saw in a vision of the night, and behold an
angel descended from heaven with seven tablets in his
hands, and he gave them to Jacob, and he read them
30 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
and knew all that was written therein which would
befall him and his sons throughout all the ages."
In the Testaments, Levi (v.) speaks of the slaughter
of Shechem as written on the tablets (as Jubilees xxx.
19, 20), Asher (ii.) says that the distinction between
clean and unclean is declared there (also in the manner
of Jubilees) ; and in vii. 5, " I have read {or known) in
the tablets of the heavens that ye will surely be dis-
obedient," etc. In each of these cases Dr. Charles
eliminates the phrase "tablets of the heavens" for
reasons which seem to me unsound. In each case
there is a distinct resemblance to the use of the phrase
in Jubilees.
We cannot be wrong, I think, in connecting the
phrase in the Prayer of Joseph with the passage in
Jubilees xxxi., and in supposing that in the Prayer the
same vision of Jacob at Bethel is referred to.
The leading idea of the principal fragment is that
angels can become incarnate in human bodies, live on
earth in the likeness of men, and be unconscious of
their original state. Israel does so apparently in order
that he may become the father of the chosen people.
It is, I believe, a doctrine which is unique in Jewish
teaching.
It has been held — e. g. by J. T. Marshall (Hastings'
Diet. Bible, II. 778) — that the Prayer was definitely anti-
Christian : it claimed for the Patriarchs the same
sublime and supernatural characteristics as Christians
claimed for Our Lord. Also, whereas in early Christian
exegesis the wrestling angel is identified with the Logos,
the pre-existent Christ (as by Justin and Origen), the
status of that angel is here lowered in favour of Israel.
These are substantial arguments. I would add that
the fragments appear to show knowledge of Christian
ideas and terminology. These are the points : {a) pre-
exist ence of the Patriarchs as opposed to " Before
Abraham was, I am" ; (b) incarnation; (c) firstborn of
every living thing; (d) "his name should have pre-
cedence of mine."
Upon the whole I incline to think that the author of
THE OLD TESTAMENT 31
the Prayer of Joseph knew something of Christian
theology and indulged in some side-hits at it. Whether
that was the main object of the book we cannot tell;
but Origen treats it with such respect that I think its
attack on Christianity cannot have been very overt.
In the Journal of Theological Studies, xx. (1918)
p. 20, Mr. Vacher Burch advocates the view that the
Praver was pro-Christian, and based on the primitive
Testiuuniia against the Jews. " The chief theme of
the fragments ... is the surpassing of one angel-
appearance of the Christ by another — of Uriel by Israel."
It is now known that Uriel was a Testimony hypostasis
of this nature, for the Ethiopic Narrative of St. Clement
(Budge, Contendings of the Apostles, ii 479) contains
this helpful passage : " And I (Peter) gave them com-
mandments concerning circumcision according to the
Law of Moses, and God (/. e. Christ) appeared unto me
in the form of the Angel Uriel, and commanded me to
do away the Old Law and to bring in the New." He
refers also to the fact that Justin Martyr makes Jacob
and Israel names of Christ. I cannot reproduce the
whole of the passage here : the thesis is to me uncon-
vincing at present. It is obscurely put by Mr. Burch,
and needs restatement in an expanded form to make it
plausible, or indeed intelligible. See further under
Hezekiah.
Jannes and Mambres
J amies and Jambres {or Mambres). The Penitence
of Jannes and Mambres is mentioned in the Gelasian
Decree. Origen {on Mattheiv xxv.) says : " Paul's state-
ment, ' As Jannes and Mambres withstood Moses '
(2 Tim. iii. 8) is not found in the ' public ' scriptures,
but in a secret (apocryphal) book entitled the Book of
Jannes and Mambres." The writer called Ambro-
siaster, on 2 Timothy, says : " This example is from the
Apocrypha. For Jannes and Mambres were brothers,
magicians or poisoners, of the Egyptians, who thought
they could resist by the art of their magic the mighty
works of God which were being accomplished through
32 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
them. But when the might of Moses in his works
proved greater, they were humbled, and confessed, with
the pain of their wounds (of. Philostorgius, below), that
it was God that wrought in Moses."
These are the old allusions that imply the existence
of a book of Jannes and Mambres. There is a good deal
of scattered legend about them, chiefly Jewish. They
are the two sons of Balaam (Num. xxi. 22) : they edu-
cated Moses (Abulpharaj) : they were drowned in the
Red Sea, 'or slain with their father by Phinehas. St.
Macarius visited their tomb, which was full of demons,
from whom he obtained leave to enter and look round.
He found a brazen vessel hanging by an iron chain in a
well and much consumed by time, and also a number of
dried-up pomegranates (Palladius, Hist. Lausiaca).
Another set of allusions is in heathen writers. Nu-
menius, quoted by Eusebius, names them, and so does
Artapanus. Pliny speaks confusedly (N. H., xxx. 11)
of the magicians Moses, Jannes, Jotapa; and Apuleius
{Apology, 90), enumerating famous wizards, names
Jesus perhaps, and certainly Moses and Jannes, Apol-
lonius, Dardanus, Zoroaster, Hostanes.
The allusions to the two wizards which occur in
Oriental chronicles have been collected by Iselin in
Zeitschrift f. Wissenschafil. TkeoL, 1894, 321.
We now come to consider possible fragments of the
book. Photius's excerpts from Philostorgius' s Eccle-
siastical History has one (ix. 2, p. 166, ed. Bidez) :
" Moses chastised Jannes and Jambres with sores and
sent the mother of one of them to death." This must
have been introduced by Philostorgius as an illustration :
the ninth book of the History is concerned with the
reign of Valens.
In the eleventh-century MS. Cotton Tiberius B. V.,
appended to a tract On the Marvels of the East, is the
following fragment in Latin and Anglo-Saxon, illus-
trated by a beautiful picture of Mambres doing an
incantation, and hell open with souls in it.
" Mambres opened the magical books of his brother
Jannes, and did necromancy and brought up from hell
THE OLD TESTAMENT 33
the shade of his brother. The soul of Jannes answered
him saying : I thy brother died not unjustly, but of a
truth justly, and judgment will go against me, for I
was wiser than all wise magicians, and I withstood the;
two brethren, Moses and Aaron, who did great signs
and wonders : therefore died I and was brought down
from among moi into hell, where there is great burning,
and the pit (lake) of perdition, whence there is no coming
up. And now, my brother Mambrcs, take heed to
thyself in thy lifetime to do good to thy sons and thy
friends : for in lull there is nothing of good, but sadness
and darkness : and w'hen thou shalt have died and
shalt be in hell among the dead, thy dwelling-place and
thy abode (seat) will be twenty {probably two) cubits
broad and four cubits long."
With the Penitence of Jannes and Mambres in the
Gclasian Decree is classed the Penitence of Cyprian (the
magician and martyr of Antioch, the parent of the
Faust-legend). This we have, and it gives an account
of his initiation into the devil's service. There are two
mentions of our wizards in it : § 6. The prince of the
devils praises Cyprian, and calls him a youth of good
gifts, a new Jambres, apt for the ministry. § 17. Cyprian
says of himself : "I do not believe there was ever a
worse man than I was : I ovitdid the Jannes and Jambres
of history. They in the midst of their lying wonders
acknowledged the finger of God, but I was wholly set
upon it that there was no God. If God did not pardon
them who even partly recognized Him, how should He
pardon me who ignored Him altogether?" In this
view the Egyptian magicians, it seems, did not find
forgiveness.
The Greek Acts of St. Kaiherine are printed in three
texts by J. Viteau (Paris, 1897). The first says that
Katherine had studied all the art of Hippocrates, Galen,
Aristotle, Homer, Plato, Philistion, Eusebius, and the
necromancies of Jannes and Jambres and the Sibyl.
The second repeats this, more than once, and also gives
two quotations from Jannes and Mambres, the first of
which defies translation, but adds : " They show, to
34 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
them that seek to behold, the faces {or persons) that
have slept in the earth from the ages." The other is
better : " But concerning the mountains {sic — ? mules)
Jannes and Jambres spake, signifying the sign of
the manger of the Lord; and concerning the stone
whereby the stone of the tomb {a verb is ivanted), as
also it was said by the prophet : The stone which the
builders rejected," etc.
If this is a genuine quotation at all (and one from the
Sibyl which precedes it is correct) it implies Messianic,
even Christian, predictions in the book.
Philostorgius by speaking of the mother " of one of
them" {OaTipor) contradicts the tradition that the
two men were brothers, if he is to be taken hterally.
The Latin fragment remains the best. It would form
a possible opening for the book, or it might come near
the end of it : it would hardly be the closing note.
Mambres must have made some reply, and even perhaps
repented as a piale. But we must confess ourselves
quite ignorant of the general character of the Penitence.
It was older, we see, than Origen, and it may have been
Christian. Cyprian's Penitence is possibly modelled
upon it to some extent.
By way of appendix a curious fragment may find a
place here. In the Roman edition of the works of
Ephraem Syrus (ii. p. 405), in the midst of the Syriac
Testament of Ephraem is suddenly interpolated the
following piece of Syriac verse, which has no link of
connexion with its context, and which I here translate
from the Latin rendering :
" In the time of Moses the magicians rose up against
the son of Amram : but the finger of God overcame
them, as they themselves also confessed.
" The righteousness of God smote the wicked men
with an evil sore, that even against their will they
might proclaim the truth : for the Truth is wont to
bear patiently until deceivers repent : but when they
are puffed up and think themselves safe, then are they
cast down into the pit.
" For when Moses was sent to bring the people out of
THE OLD TESTAMENT 35
Egypt, at the bidding of Pharaoh's Lord he came to
Pharaoh and told him the command of God. When
Pharaoli licard it he was driven to rage and fury and
turned to blasphemy; and when the matter was pub-
lished throughout the city and was come to the ears
of the nobles of those parts, some said : It is the com-
mand of God and must be obeyed at all costs.
" P>ut the King, when he saw Moses, feared, and began
to feel the punishment that hung over him.
" Is there any that does not fear at the sight of the
Lord ? or who would not tremble at beholding God ?
So Pharaoh feared Moses, because he was the god of
Pharaoh.
" The whole multitude of the magicians of Egypt
hasted together to see a new marvel, for in the face of
Moses was the angel of fire and wind, surpassing the
brightness of the sun and of lightning, so that whoever
fixed his eyes on him took him for a god ; but they
who heard his voice — for he was stammering and stut-
tered— despised and contemned him as a man. And
one affirmed that he was come down from heaven :
another set him wholly at naught : for, said he, if there
were any great thing in him, surely he would have
healed himself.
" Now Moses, as you have heard, knew the tongue of
that country well ; bred up in the house of Pharaoh,
he had drunk in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, as the
Apostle witnesses to us of him. And though he were
not aware of it himself, yet he had the Holy Spirit
dwelling in him, from whom he had learned all that had
happened from Adam even to his own days, and was
not ignorant of what the magicians were plotting
against him.
" So Pharaoh called together all the magicians and their
disciples and spoke to them of Moses thus : It is now
time that whatever power 3^)11 have you should put
forth for the common good. When war is upon us there
is need of mighty men, and the skill of physicians
appears then when diseases are rife. Throughout all
the world the people will laugh at us with great disgrace
D
36 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
of our name if we are overcome by this stammering
stutterer. Be therefore strong in conflict till we bear
off victory : contend valiantly till we triumph. There
is no man who knows not our name or extols you not
as workers of wonders : we (ye?) have been wont to be
helpers even of Kings when war came upon them.
If then they see us made a laughing-stock to a stammerer,
much more shall we be despised by all other men. Up
then, put on a manly spirit, and go forth to battle like
heroes of renown, that we may gain an eternal name ;
and so all who hear of it may be smitten with fear and
not dare to resist our people. And though I excel in
royal dignity, yet I uphold the common cause with you.
To all of us there will be like honour or like shame.
" The magicians, stirred by these words, as if made
drunk with wine, promised seas and mountains to
Pharaoh Iving of Egypt. The sun, said they, shall not
again rise to lighten Egypt before the son of Amram has
ceased to live. What time thou, O King, takest quiet
slumber in thy bed, then shalt thou hear that Moses
has been punished by a shameful death. And this,
indeed, we account as nothing : it is child's play. Come
then, enter thy chamber and climb up upon thy bed
and sleep : for the death of Moses is at the doors, and he
shall not, believe us, see another day.
" Thus the magicians left Pharaoh. And he, believing
their words, could not sleep for his impatience, looking
for the dawn of day : nor, had he slept, could he rest
without the coming of the same images to him in his
slumber.
" But they, practising their arts, called up devils
and sent them against Moses. The evil spirits rushed
in hosts upon the holy man : but the power of God and
the prayer of the righteous one drove them back as the
storm scatters the fire and the wind the smoke. vSo
did the demons fly from the face of Moses as the con-
quered flee in battle before the victors, and thieves turn
their backs when they hear the voices of the watchmen
approaching.
" As light dispels darkness, so did Moses drive away
THE OLD TESTAMENT 37
the wicked ones. Headlong they returned to the
magicians by whom they had been hired ; and, said
they : We lose our labour against this man, for he is
stronger than we, and we cannot get near to the border
of the place where \\r dwells.
" Ah'anwhile the tlay dawned, and I^haraoh anxiously
expectt'd that what the magicians had promised him,
of the death of Moses, should have been fulhlled. But
when the aj-)]iointed time was past, and there came none
to tell the tidings he desired, the King called the magi-
cians and spake thus to them : Why, said he, hath the
matter fallen out otherwise than as you promised ? for
you said, Moses shall not see another day after this.
" The magicians said to him : Have patience a little :
the man's death is indeed near, but we can do nothing
in haste, O King, and this day allows it not, for to-day
it is new moon : when the moon begins to wane, then
shall the life of Moses fail.
" This was the cause they pretended to him, until the
appointed hour should come to Moses : but the King
received their words gladly, being subject to the same
errors as they.
" The magicians therefore set to work : they took
somewhat of tln^ hairs and garments of Moses, and made
an image of him, and laid it up in a tomb, and set evil
demons against it. Immediately the demons came,
and the princes of them : Satan was ready with his
hosts, all of them in divers forms, to destroy Moses.
" They ran against him in a troop. But when they
lifted uj) their eyes to the holy prophet and saw him
encomjxissed by a host of angels, like as it was once with
Elisha, they could not bear the look of him, much less
attack him, and all together they fled away in confusion
with cries and bowlings.
" This thing brought the magicians to perplexity.
They turned therefore to other means to save their name
and not be found guilty of deceit and lying before the
King. Accordingly they took a cup full of wine and
by their enchantments compelled vipers and dragons
to spue their venom into it ; and when it was ready they
38 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
gave the cup to Moses, that he might drink it and burst
asunder. Take, said they, this wine which the King
of Egypt sends thee, and drink it, for to this pinnacle
of honour he will have thee raised, as he hath long ago
desired; and this wine itself is like the desire of the
King, for it is old, and by reason of length of time is
become muddy and dark.
" At this Moses smiled, and took the cup and signed
it in the name of God and drank the wine without any
hurt. But that they might know that their deceit
was not hidden from him, he turned to them and said :
Come, tell the King, who hath sent me to drink wine
mingled with the poison of serpents, that none of these
things do any hurt to the servants of God.
" Thus far concerning Moses and the Magicians."
The elegancies of the poetic form are not so excessive
as to disguise the story, and it is one which I do not
find elsewhere. The drinking of the poison is like, or
has been made like, the famous miracle of St. John the
Evangelist : the " signing" of the cup may well be a
touch of the poet's ; it is the only one that is obviously
Christian. I should not be at all surprised to find that
we had here a paraphrase of part of the story of Jannes
and Mambres. Note that the unsuccessful attacks of
the demons are just such as occur in the Penitence of
Cyprian, which is linked with that of the Egyptian
wizards. The (Latin) Acts of St. James the Great
contain something similar, in the tale of Hermogenes
and Philetus.
Eldad and Medad
Eld ad and Medad {Mod at) was a short book of 400 lines,
longer than Ephesians (312), shorter than 2 Corinthians
(590). Of it we have one certain fragment. Hernias,
who in the Shepherd makes many unacknowledged
borrowings, quotes a scripture by name once and once
only. In Vision ii. 5 he says : " The Lord is near unto
them that turn to Him, as it is written in Eldad and
Medad, who prophesied to the people in the wilderness."
We cannot doubt that the matter of the book was the
THE OLD TESTAMENT 39
I)r(ii)li(ti(- utterances of lildad and Mcdad. Legend
lias not been \ery busy with their names, but the
Miihasliini {'I'diuiiiiiiui) and Targnms say something of
them and of what they j^rophesied. They are made
half-brothers of Moses, in two ways, (i) According to
the author of the Hcbrac Questions on Chronicles (iv. 17),
attributed to Jerome, they had other names, Epher and
Jalon. After the gi\ing of the Law, he goes on, Moses
commanded his father Amrani to put away his wife
Jochebed, because she, being Levi's daughter, was aunt
to her husband. Amram did so, married again, and
Eldad and Medad were his offspring. (2) A Midrash
says that after Amram' s death Jochebed married
Elizaphan and bore Eldad and Medad to him. The gift
of ])rophecy was bestowed on them [Sanhcdrin, i)
because when chosen among the seventy Elders they
said they w'ere unworthy of the honour. Tanchmna
says they prophesied of things that were to happen as
long as forty years after, whereas the other Elders only
predicted things near at hand. Alone among the
Elders their names arc recorded ; they kept their gift
of prophecy and entered the Promised lland. They
prophesied of the death of Moses and succession of
Joshua (so also Pseudo-Philo) ; or, say others, of the
quails ; or of Gog and Magog.
We have seen that Hernias at Rome cjuotes Eldad and
Medad. In Clement of Rome's letter, and in the Homily
that is called his second Epistle, a prophetical passage
is quoted without a name, which Bishop Lightfoot
guessed to be taken from this same book. The guess
is an interesting one, and the passage shall be given
here. There are considerable differences between the
two quotations.
1. C lem., 23 ; II. 1 1 : " Ear be from you that scripture
where it saith (for the prophetic word also saith, II.) :
Miserable are the double-minded which doubt in their
soul (heart, II.), which say : (all, II.) these things we
heard in our fathers' days also, and lo ! we have grown
old and nothing of these things hath befallen us (but
we expecting from day to day have seen none of these
40 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
things, n.). O foolish ones, compare yourselves to a
tree ; take the vine ; first it sheddeth the leaf, then a
shoot cometh (then a leaf, then a flower : H. omits),
and after that a sour berry, then a cluster fully ripe.
(Here I. ends; H. continues) : So also my people hath
had unquietnesses and afflictions : afterward it shall
receive good things."
The resemblance to 2 Peter iii. 4, etc. (where is the
promise of his coming?) is pointed out by Lightfoot.
The difficulty I find in acquiescing in Lightfoot' s
conjecture is that I do not quite sec whom Eldad and
Medad would be addressing. In the story as we have
it in Numbers xi., their prophecy is uttered not very
long after the giving of the Law, and just before the
gift of the quails. The people have not been long in
the wilderness — not long enough, it seems to me, to make
it appropriate that they should say " we have grown old
in looking for the fulfilment of the promises." Such
language would be more fitting in the mouth of Israel
when in exile and hoping for the Return. And so I
think that those are perhaps more likely to be right who
suggest that the apocryphal Ezekiel is the source of
this passage.
Og
The Book of Og the Giant, who is said by the heretics to
have fought ivith a dragon after the Flood. This is the
most sensational entry in the Gelasian Decree. How
we should like to have the book in which such stirring
incidents were related !
What can we elicit from records, or reasonably con-
jecture, about it ? It was circulated by heretics. What
heretics? I guess the Manichaeans, for in a list of
Manicht'ean books given by Timotheus, Presbyter of
Constantinople (Fabricius, Cod. Apocr. N.T., i. 139)
is one called " The matter (or treatise) of the Giants"
(17 Twv ytyavTwv Trpay/Aareta), which may fairly be
identified with the Book of Og. Other Manichaean
writings — the Fotindation and the Treastire of Life —
THE OTl) TKSTAMFAT 41
are condemned, be it noted in passing, in the Gelasian
Decree.
But how should Og, who was conquered and slain by
Moses, ha\"e fought with a dragon after the Flood? It
is the constant Rabbinic story that he was one of the
anii'dihu'ian giants, and that he escaped the Flood by
riding on the roof of Noah's ark, being fed by Noah :
and, further, that he was identical with Eliezer the
servant of Abraham. Once one of his teeth fell out,
and Abraham made an armchair out of it. This and
many other stories demonstrating his great size, may be
found collected in Eisenmengcr's Entdecktes Judenthum,
or Baring (lould's Legends of Old Testament Characters.
But there is nothing in them about a dragon.
An unexpected source gives what may be a reminis-
cence of that incident. In the metrical Anglo-Saxon
Dialof^ue of Salomon and Saturn are the following
question and answer : —
" Salomon : Tell me of the land where no man may
step with feet.
" Satitrnus quoth : The sailor o\-er the sca^ the noble
one, was named WandermL" Wolf fwealTende Wulf),
well known unto the tribes of th( I'liilistines, the friend
of Nebrond (= Niniroc^. He slew upon the plain
five-and twenty dragons at daybreak, and himself fell
down there dead : therefore that land may not any
man — that boundary place any one visit, nor bird fly
over it, or any more the cattle of the field. Thence the
poisonous race first of all widely arose, which now
bubbling through breath of poison force their way.
Yet shines his sword mightily sheathed, and over his
burial-place glimmer the hilts."
Only a reminiscence, clearly, if that : for Og, we see,
survived the combat for many centuries. But quite
possibly a reminiscence, for the hero is of the right sort
of date, the friend of Nimrod, and early enough to be
connected with the rise of the whole tribe of venomous
beasts.
Dragons and floods are not unconnected in mythology.
Sometimes the dragon, it is thought, is a torrent or flood
42 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
personified; sometimes (as in Rev. xii. 15) lie is the
source of it. We may remember that it was after the
DeucaHon flood that the Python took up his abode at
Delphi, where Apollo slew him. Some such myth as
that lies, perhaps, at the bottom of the lost story of Og.
Moses (Apocalypse, Testament, Assumption) |
To Moses two entries are devoted in the lists. \te
have the Testament, iioo lines long, and the Assumption,
1400. Besides that, an Apocalypse of Moses is named;
George the Syncellus says that Gal. v. 6; vi. 15 (Ii
Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything,
etc.) is from the Apocalypse of Moses : a marginal
scholium in several MSS. of the Epistles agrees that it is
" from an apocryphon of Moses." There must be some
mistake. The only text in Galatians which could be
plausibly assigned to such a source is iii. 19 : "It was
ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator," which
might be an allusion to the Assmnption (God foresaw
me ... to be the mediator of His covenant) : no con-
ceivable Jewish book could have contained the state-
ment of Gal. V. 6, and no Christian forger of early times
ever did his work quite so badly. At some ancient date
the marginal reference must have been attached to the
wrong place, and our authorities have copied it in its
dislocated state. (A passage which might more plausibly
be referred to a book called the Apocalypse of Moses
is 2 Cor. xi. 14 (Satan is transformed into an angel of
light), for this does happen in the Life of Adam : and
the Greek recension of that is called the Apocalypse of
Moses.)
Two Apocalypses of Moses we have : the name is an
alternative title of the Book of fuhilees, according to
Cieorge Cedrenus; and there is a Greek Apocalypse of
Moses (ed. Tischendorf, etc.) which is really nothing
but a Life of Adam, identical in great part with the
Latin Vita Adx et Evsc. Besides this there is a (late?)
Hebrew Apocalypse, of Moses' progress through the
seven heavens. ,
THE OLD TJlSTAMENT 43
Wliat of the Tcstamcut ? 'Ilicrc is one express quota-
tinii fioin it in a (iivck catena on tlie Octatcurli, giving
ihr dimensions of the Tower of Babel, and this j>roves
to be a quotation of Jubilees. Sonic therefore think
the Testament to be Jubilees under yet another name :
the obstacle is that iioo lines is far too small a total for
Jubilees. Dr. Charles diiiers. He thinks the Testament
is that last dying speech of Moses, part of which we have
in Latin and usually call the Assumption. In his view
the Assumption proper was amalgamated at an early
date with the Testament, and the two books circulated
under the title of the Assumption. All the Latin frag-
nuMit belongs to the Testament. Early the amalgamation
nuist have been, for Jude quotes both parts in the first
century (or at least early in the second). His 9th verse
is, Origen tells us, from the Assumption, and his i6th
we find in the Latin fragment.
The question is a difficult one. We will return to it,
after collecting the fragments of the lost Assumption
proper.
Let it be premised that in the spurious Acts of the
Council of Nice by Gelasius Cyzicenus there is a dialogue
between the Fathers and a Pagan philosopher. The
Fathers twice quote the Assumption by name. First
they give the text which stands in our Latin fragment
as i. 14 : " God foresaw me before the foundation of
the world to be the mediator of His covenant." Then,
after a few pages, they say : " And in the Book of the
Assumption oj Moses Michael the Archangel, speaking
with the devil, says, " For from His holy Spirit all we
were created." And again he says : " From the face
of God His Spirit went forth, and the world was." The
philosopher says : " As to this Assumption of Moses
which you quote, and of which 3'ou have just spoken,
I never heard of it until now, so I beg you to expound
to me more clearly the connexion of what is said."
But no more light is given.
Jude g, as is well known, is stated by Clement of
Alexandria and Origen and Didymus to be a citatioii
from the Assumption. " But Michael the archangel,
44 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
when, contending with the devil, he disputed about the
body of Moses, durst not bring against him a raihng
accusation, but said, ' The Lord rebuke thee.' "
Origen [De Principiis, iii. 2) : "The serpent in Genesis
is represented as deceiving Eve, a propos of which, in
the Ascension of Moses (a book mentioned by the
Apostle Jude in his Epistle), Michael the archangel,
disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, says
that the serpent, inspired by the devil, was the cause
of the transgression of Adam and Eve."
These are certain quotations. So are the next three,
but the source is not named. Clement of Alexandria,
Strom, vi., xv. (§ 132, p. 498, Stiihelin) :
" With good reason, then, did Jesus the son of Naue
behold Moses being taken up in two forms, the one
companying with angels, the other being honoured with
burial in the glens of the mountains. But Jesus saw
this sight below him, being lifted up by the spirit, with
Chaleb also : but not in like manner do they both
behold, but the one descended rather quickly, since he
bore with him much that weighed him down, while the
other, descending after him, related subsequently the
glory which he beheld, having been able to discern more
than the other, inasmuch as he was purer. The story
indicates, I suppose, that gnosis is not for every man,
since some look to the body of the Scriptures, the words
and names, corresponding to the body of Moses, and
others discern the thought, and what is signified by
the names : such are concerned with the Moses who
companied with angels.
"... The story about Moses teaches that contem-
plation is not given in full even to those in whom know-
ledge is at home, until, grown accustomed to looking
directly at it, as the Hebrews on the glory of Moses and
the holy men of Israel upon visions of angels, we become
able to gaze upon the flashing light of truth."
Two other passages speak of the same episode :
Origen [on Joshua ii. i) : " In a certain book, though it
be not in the canon, a figure of this mystery is described.
It is related that two Moses' were seen, one alive in the
THE OLD TKSTA.M1':NT 45
spirit, tlie other dead in llu> body; wherein of course
this is indicated, that if Ihou look at the bare letter of
the law, empty of all the things that we have mentioned,
that is Moses dead in the body : but if thou canst take
away the veil of the law, and understand that the law
is S))iiitna], that is Moses who liveth in the spirit."
l'^ve)dius, lUshop of Uzala, writing to Augustine
(Ep. 258) : " In the apocryphal and the secret books of
Moses himself — a writing without authority — when he
went uj) into the mountain to die, such violence was done
to his body {oy the might of his body was such : vi
corporis cfficitur lit) that there was one body which was
conunitted to the earth, and another which was joined
with an angel as companion."
Next we come to a class of passages which relate to
the contest of Michael with Satan.
Severus, Patriarch of Antioch (542), quoted in the
Catena of Nicephorus on Deut. xxxiv., begins by saying
that upon the parting of the soul from the body, good and
evil angels meet it ; each band claiming it for their own
in virtue of its deeds done in the body ; and continues :
" God, willing to show this also to the children of Israel
by means of a bodily image, ordained that at the burial
of Moses there should appear before their eyes at the
time of the dressing (Trepto-ToXr/) of the body and its due
depositing in the earth, the evil demon as it were
resisting and oj)posing; and that Michael, a good angel,
should encounter and repel him, and should not rebuke
him on his own authority, but retire from giving judg-
ment against him in favour of the Lord of All, saying,
' The Lord rebuke thee,' in order that those who are
being instructed in the word might learn that a measure
of conflict awaits souls after their departure hence . . .
further, when this heavenly image had come before
their eyes, there came a cloud or light about the place
which dazzled the eyes of the onlookers, and walled his
grave off, that they might not see it. Therefore also
it says in the Scripture, ' No man hath seen his end, or
his grave, unto this day.' This, it is said, is set forth
in an apocryphal book which contains the more detailed
46 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
account (XcTTTOTcpai/ dcfitjyqa-Lv) of the genesis or crea-
tion." These last words are an undoubted reference —
whether a correct one or not we shall have to consider —
to the Leptogenesis or Book of Jubilees.
Two other passages of Severus (who seems to have
been attracted by the subject) are given in Catemv on
Jude.
" Michael is said to have ministered about the burial
of the body of Moses, when the devil withstood this, by
the permission of God, who wished by this manifesta-
tion to show them, who then were short of sight and dull
of understanding," that evil powers meet the soul after
death.
" Contending with the devil — a blasphemer and
fighter against God from the beginning : from the time
when he was infected with apostasy and after that
deceived Adam (and) by craft fought against the
commandment of God."
The anonymous extracts in Catenx and marginal
scholia of MSS. are many : I will give one here from a
good Greek MS. (Bodl. Arch. £5,9) which sums up almost
all the matter of the others.
It is a scholium on Jude 9.
" Hereby he shows that the Old Testament agrees
with the New, both being given by one God. For the
devil resisted, trying to deceive, saying, ' The body is
mine, for I am the Lord of matter,' and was answered
by ' The Lord rebuke thee' — that is, the Lord who is
Master of all spirits. Others say that God, willing to
show that after our departure hence demons oppose
our souls on their upward course, permitted this to be
beheld at the burial of Moses. For the devil also blas-
phemed against Moses, calling him a murderer because
he smote the Egyptian. Michael the Archangel, not
enduring his blasphemy, said to him, ' The Lord God
rebuke thee, devil.' He also said this, that God had
lied by bringing Moses into the land which He swore
he should not enter."
The other notes add nothing to this, except it be one
sentence with which some begin, viz.: " When Moses
THE OLD TESTAMI:NT 47
had died in tlic mount, Michael was sent to remove the
body." Several of them read " God rebuke thee."
instead of " the Lord," and this migJd be a quotation
from the Assumption.
Next I place two accounts of the death of Moses.
The first is from the Greek Paha, a popular Bible-
history of By/.antine times, which is the Eastern equiva-
lent of the Historia Scholastica (of Petrus Comestor,
cent, xii.), which, with the French version, the Bible
Historialc, was so common in the West. The text of
the Pal.L'a, printed by Vassiliev in Anccdoia Gr.ico-
Byzantina, has this passage (p. 247) :
" Of the death of Moses. And Moses said unto Jesus
the son of Naue, ' Let us go up into the mountain.'
And when they were gone up, Moses saw the land of
promise and said to Jesus, ' Go down unto the people
and tell them " Moses is dead." ' And Jesus went
down unto the people, but Moses came to the end of his
lif(\ And Samael tried to bring down his body (taber-
nacle) unto the people, that they might make him a
god. But Michael, the Chief Captain, by the conmiand
of God came to take him and bury him, and Samael
resisted him, and they contended. So the Chief Captain
was wroth and rebuked him, saying, ' The Lord rebuke
thee, devil.' And so the adversary was vanquished and
took to flight, but the Archangel Michael buried the
body of Moses where he was bidden by Christ our God
(ancl no man saw the burial of Moses)."
The second is from the Slavonic Life of Moses trans-
lated by Bonwetsch in the Gottingen Nachrichten for
1900, pp. 581-607. This Life for the most part follows
Jewish tradition very closely, and has the familiar
additions to the story which we fmd in Josephus.
After mentioning the deaths of Miriam and Aaron, it
says :
" But at the end of the same year in the 2nd [sic)
month Nadet, on the 7th day (that is in March), Moses
the servant of God died and was buried on the 4th of
the month September on a certain mountain b}^ the
Chief Captain Michael. For the devil contended with
48 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
the angel, and would not permit his body to be buried,
saying, ' Moses is a murderer. He slew a man in Egypt
and hid him in the sand.' Then Michael prayed to
God and there was thunder and lightning and suddenly
the devil disappeared ; but Michael buried him with
his oimi hands."
The mention of the thunder and lightning does occur
also in a Greek note which I have read in a recent German
comment on Jude, but unfortunately cannot now trace.
Two more passages exhaust my material.
Clement of Alexandria, Strom, i. 23 (§ 153, p. Q5,
Stahelin) : " Moses was called Joacim. He had also
a third name in heaven after his assumption, as the
initiated (/auo-tui) say, viz. Melchi." Within a few lines
(§ 154, p. q6) he seems to quote the same authority
again. " The initiated (/xuVrai) say that he slew the
Egyptian merely with a word, as Peter slew Ananias
and Sapphira." We know that the slaying of the
Egyptian was part of the devil's claim against Moses in
the Assumption.
Epiphanius, H.rr. i : " The angels, as the tradition
that has reached us tells, buried the body of the holy
Moses, and did not purify (wash) themselves, but the
angels were not made unclean (common) by the holy
body."
From these data a conjectural narrative may be put
together.
Moses dies in the Mount. Michael and other angels
are sent to bury him. They find Satan about to carry
off the body, and meaning to induce the people to worship
it. They contend with him, and he resists and says,
" The body is mine, for all material things belong to
me." " No," replies Michael. " By His Holy Spirit
all we were created," and, " From the face of God His
Spirit went forth and the world came into being."
Possibly at this time, too, Michael reproached him for
having brought sin into the world by inspiring the
serpent to deceive Adam and Eve. Then Satan said,
" Moses is a murderer, and must not be buried with
honour : he slew the Egyptian" ; and again, " God has
THE OLD TESTAMENT 49
lied in bringing Moses into the land which He swore he
should not enter." Michael, aghast at the blasphemy,
said, " The Lord rebuke thee." The Lord, in answer,
tlnnidered and lightened out of heaven, and Satan fled.
There were some mortal spectators of the scene :
l)i-rhaps only Joshua^and Caleb, perhaps the contest was
\-isil)le to the people, as Severus seems to indicate, and
after that a cloud of liglit shut off their view. At any
rate, of what followed, Joshua and Caleb were the only
spectators, and one of them (almost certainly Joshua)
saw more than the other. Both were caught up into
the air, and below them they saw a wonderful spectacle :
there were two figures of Moses, one being laid in the
earth by angels in a mountain valley, the other, accom-
panied by angels, passing upwards to the heavens.
Caleb, who seems to have been ceremonially impure,
sank to the earth before Joshua : Joshua descended
after him and related what he had seen to the people.
He was able to tell them that the angels who had buried
Moses had contracted no ceremonial pollution by
touching that dead body, and also that he had heard a
new name of Moses proclaimed in heaven, namely,
Melchi.
Some points in the story are so interesting and unusual
that we must greatly regret the loss of the full text.
There is no doubt that the complexion of the Latin
fragment which we have is quite unlike what we ha\'e
of the Assumption. The one is wholly prophecy, and
dialogue with Joshua, the other is mystical romance.
So far Dr. Charles has a plausible case for his suggestion
that two books, originally separate, have been amal-
gamated. We have a parallel in i\\<i Ascension of Isaia/i,
which consists of two distinct parts, the Martyrdom
and the Vision. The fashion has been to regard these
as originally distinct ; or rather, perhaps, to say that the
Vision is a later appendix to the Martyrdom. How-
ever, in this case Professor Burkitt {Christian and Jewish
Apocalypses : Schweich Lectures) has brought forward
strong grounds for believing that the book may really
be a unity : and I am on the whole prepared to follow
50 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
him in thinking (as he does) that the Assumption of
Moses also originally contained both elements, of
prophecy and romance. The amalgamation of the two,
if it took place, must have been effected within a very
short space. The prophecy is dated by Dr. Charles
in the first century, and the Assumption story was joined
with it, as wc have seen, before Jude wrote his Epistle.
Dr. Charles asks, reasonably enough : If the title
Assumption includes the Latin fragment, what was the
Testament ? Not the Jubilees ; for that is far more
than 1 100 lines long— probably 4000 or 5000.
Well, we cannot go much behind our evidence. The
Catena of Nicephorus quotes a piece which occurs in
Jubilees and calls its source the Testament. We are
reduced, I think, to supposing either that the number of
lines in the MSS. of the Stichometry is grossly wrong,
or that some excerpt or shortened text of Jubilees was
current under the name of the Testament of Moses.
It seems clear that the Jtibilees and the Assumption
were circulated together. There are two pieces of
evidence of this. The Milan palimpsest contains the
Latin version of both : the versions of the two works
were made, it appears, by different translators; but
there they are together. Also Severus of Antioch, as
we have seen, says that his source was the Leptogenesis
(= Jubilees), but the story he has told relating to the
death and burial of Moses and to the contention of
Michael with Satan finds no place in Jubilees, whereas
it was treated of in the Assumption. My inference is
that he or his authority (for his expressions suggest that
he is writing at second hand) used a volume in which
both Jubilees and the Assumption were contained.
The Latin fragment, it is calculated, contains 384
whole stichoi : the Assumption (entire) had 1400. We
appear to possess the whole, or very nearly the whole,
of the Prophecy of Moses : the writer has brought his
sketch of events down to and be3'ond his own time.
The story of the Assumption might well occupy the
1000 stichoi that remain. But Dr. Charles supposes
that the Latin fragment is the Testament (of iioo stichoi),
run: old testament 51
and that the Assumption of the hsts is the second part,
which was amalgamated with the Testament. I find it
difficult to imagine how the iioo stichoi of the Testament
could have been filled up ; and I think the lists are too
late in date to be credited with preserving the tradition
of the two books as separate. They were already joined
in Jude's time; the lists, at a generous estimate, could
hardly be older than the fourth century, and we are not
sure that they are older than the sixth.
There is some reason for thinking that other Moses
Apocrypha of a prophetic kind were current. The
same passage of Gelasius Cyzicenus which gave us two
sentences of the Assumption says (immediately after
quoting the sentence about the mediator) : " And in
the Book of the Mystical Words of Moses, Moses himself
predicted concerning David and Solomon, and of
Solomon he predicted thus : ' And God shall give by
inheritance unto him (StfiSoxfwet da- avrov) wisdom and
justice and full knowledge : he shall build the house,
of God,' and what follows." It is just possible that
the writer here may be ignorantly quoting one book
under two names, or employing two sources ; compare
the " mystic words" of the title with Clement's use of
(/xiWai) " initiated," where he is to all appearance
quoting the Assumption. In any case, we never hear
of llie Book of Mystic Words again.
One of the most considerable Greek magical texts
that the papyri have given us purports to be a secret
Book of Moses, the Eighth. It is printed by Dieterich
in Abraxas. A Hebrew magical text, the Sword of
Moses, has been edited by Dr. M. Gaster, as well as an
Apocalypse, a vision of the next world. A Colloquy of
the Prophet Moses imth God, of Christian complexion,
was printed by Lord Zouche of Parham (Hon. R. Curzon)
from a MS. in his possession, and again by Isaac Hall
in the American periodical Hebraica, 1891.
Solomon
The principal Apocrypha current under this name are
the famous Book of Wisdom, the Psalms and Odes, the
E
52 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
less known Testament, a number of quite late magical
books, and a dialogue with the Queen of Sheba (tr.
Issaverdens).
There is a romance, too, in Slavonic, the story of
Solomon and Kitovras, of which I know no version in
a readable language, and this is connected with the
dialogue-literature that goes under Solomon's name in
the Salomon and Saturn and Salomon and Marcolphns.
The latter exists in most European vernaculars, and,
as time goes on, becomes more and more coarse and
burlesque. The former, Salomon and Saturn, is best
represented by certain Anglo-Saxon texts which Kemblc
edited with a valuable collection of illustrative docu-
ments for the ^Ifric Society, while A. von Vincenti
issued the prolegomena of a new edition in 1904. I
cannot tell whether his work has been completed.
This Salomon and Saturn is mentioned here because
I believe it to be the text called in the Gelasian Decree
the Interdictio or Contradictio Salomonis. It is not
universally allowed to be the same. Kemble thought it
was. The Interdictio is mentioned in the decree along
with magical " phylacteries," and some have thought
that it was a magical text.
The case cannot be positively settled by any evidence
we have at present. Wliether or not, however, the
Salomon and Saturn is identical with the Interdictio,
it represents an old book, and a strange one.
The first portion, partly in verse and partly in prose,
is occupied with a description of the glories of the
" Palm-twigged Paternoster" (the prayer being personi-
fied) and of the combat between the devil and the
Paternoster. This is quite unique, so far as I know.
Then we have a second part in verse, which is in the
riddle form, predominantly. In it is that possible
allusion to the story of Og which has been quoted, and
also a curious description of a monstrous bird called
Vasa Mortis ; most of the questions, however, relate
to life and morals. It is fairly certain, says Vincenti
(p. 124), that a Latin original lies behind the poem.
If he is right, the case would be like that of the amazing
Till' OT.D TF.STAMKNT 53
Irish book called the Everneiv Tongue, where a Latin
original has been overlaid, thickly, by Celtic imagery.
(Sec J. T. S., iQiS.)
Very different in character is the prose Anglo-Saxon
Salomon and Satitr)i, which asks such questions as,
which is the blessedest bird, where the sun sets, who
first planted the vine, etc., etc. Of this pedestrian
class of catechisms there are many specimens in East
and West, running down to the very end of the mediseval
period, and beytmd it. The whole class deserves collec-
tion and examination, from the pagan and })hilosophical
dialogue of Hadrian and Sccundus to the " Master of
Oxenford's" Catechism.
Elijah. Apocalypse
EUas. The list of the Sixty Books speaks of the
Apocalvpse of E/ias. The other two have simply " Of
Elias the Prophet." The Latin version of the sticho-
metry, by Anastasius Bibliothecarius, renders " Prophecy
of Elias." The Armenian has " The Mystx^ries of Elias."
The stichometry gives it 316 lines.
To this book, two passages in St. Paul's Epistles are
referred. The first is i Cor. ii. 9 : " Eye hath not
seen," etc. Origin {on Malt, xxvii. 9) says : " This is
found in no canonical book, but in the apocrypha {in
secrclis) of Elias." Jerome (Ep. loi to Pammachius),
with his eye on Origen, no doubt, writes : " In this
place some will follow after the drivellings of apocryphal
wiitings and say that the quotation is taken from the
Apocalypse of Elias, whereas we read thus in Isaiah
according to the Hebrew, ' From everlasting they have
not heard,' etc. (Isa. Ixiv. 4)." And again, in his great
commentary on Isaiah (lib. xvii.) he fulminates against
this view, contorting Ps. x. 3, and making it say " the
devil lies in wait in the Apocrypha," after which he adds,
" for the Ascension of Isaiah and the Apocalypse of
Elias have this quotation."
The truth about the quotation seems to be (as Mr.
H. St. J. Thackeray has shown in St. Paul and Con-
temporary Jewish Thought, p. 240) that it was a blend
54 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
of passages from Isaiah (Ixiv. 4, Ixv. 16, 17) in current
use in the first century. Pseudo-Philo has it (xxvi. 13),
and this makes it easier to beheve that Origen was
right when he said it occurred in the Apocalypse of E lias.
It is also found, as Jerome says, in the Ascension of
Isaiah (xi. 34), but in the Latin and Slavonic, not the
Ethiopic version.
Resch, in his Agrapha, p. 154 ff., has a long dis-
quisition on the subject, and among the parallels he
adduces is one which deserves to be repeated here.
Clement of Alexandria {ProtrepL, § 44, p. 6g, Stahelin,
76, Potter) has this passage : " Wherefore the Scripture
with reason makes this promise to them that have
believed : ' but the Saints of the Lord shall inherit the
glory of God and His power.' " " Tell me what glory,
O blessed one?" "That which eye hath not seen,
nor ear heard, neither hath it come up upon the heart
of man : and they shall rejoice at the kingdom {Ittl ry
ySao-tAe/u) of their Lord for ever. Amen." This is
apparently the conclusion of a book : with it we should
compare (as Resch does) a passage in the Apostolical
Constitutions (vii. 32, p. 212), which is an amplification
of the end of the Didache, and runs thus \
" Then shall the wicked depart into everlasting
punishment : but the righteous shall go into life eternal,
inheriting those things which eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, neither have they come up upon the heart of
man, which God hath prepared for them that love Him,
and shall rejoice in the Kingdom of God in Christ Jesus."
The other Pauline passage referred to this book is
Ephesians v. 14 : " Awake, thou that sleepest," etc.,
of which Epiphanius {Har. xlii. i) says : " This is con-
tained in Elias." Others derive it from a book of
Jeremiah, as we shall see. Hippolytus {on Daniel iv.
56) gives it to Isaiah, where Esaias may be an error for
Elias. There is nothing to confirm or invalidate
Epiphanius' s statement.
Two other fragments definitely attributed to the
Apocalvpse of Elias have made their appearance in
recent years.
THK OLD T1:sTA.MI':NT 55
Oiir is in a very cun<nis Latin document, itself
apociA'plial, wliirh is entitled The Kpislle of Titus, the
liisciplc of Paul, and is preserved in an eighth-century
MS. at Wiirzburg. It has not been printed as a whole,
hut Doni. D. dc Bruyn, O.S.R., has published in the
Ri'viic In'in'dictiiic (iqoo, pp. 149-160) a number of
apocryi'hal (juotations from it. One is this : " The
prophet Helias bears witness that he saw : ' The angel
of the Lord,' saith he, ' showed me a deep valley which
is called (iehenna, burning with sulphur and pitch,
and in I hat place are many souls of sinners, and thus
are they tortured with divers torments. Some suffer
hanging . . . by their tongues, some by their eyes,
others hang head downward ; women will be tormented
by their breasts, and youths hanging by their hands ;
certain maidens are burned ujion a gridiron and some
souls are fixed ( ? pierced) with perpetual pain. Now
by these divers torments is shown the act of every
one. . . . They that hang by the tongues are
blaspliemers and also false witnesses : they that are
burned (read hung by) their eyes are they that have
[been] offended in regard of sight, because they looked
upon things done guiltily in concupiscence : but they
that hang head downwards, these are they that hated
the righteousness of God, being of evil counsel, neither
did any agree with his brother : rightly, therefore, are
they burned ( ? hung) by the decree of punishment
{lit. punishment of decree). But whereas women are
commanded to be tormented in their breasts, these are
they which gave their bodies unto men in lasciviousness,
wherefore the men also will be hard by them in torments,
hanging by their hands upon this account."
My version tries to give an idea of the obscurity and
badness of the Latin. The passage shows that part of
the Apocalypse at least dealt with visions of the next
world, and that in it hell-torments were described (as
they are in the Apocalypse of Peter), as suited to the
sin of the sufferer. This fashion rules in a whole series
of later Christian Apocalypses ; but it is a deduction
from the lex talionis and is exemplified in_writings
56 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
undoubtedly Jewish. Thus in the Chronicles of Jerah-
mccl (tr. M. Gaster, iSgg, pp. 34-36) are two revelations
which agree most closely with our fragment.
{a) R. Joshua, son of Levi, said, " I was walking on
my way when I met the prophet Elijah. He said to me,
' Would you like to be brought to the gate of hell ? ' I
answered, ' Yes.' So he showed me men hanging by
their hair, and he said to me, ' These were the men that
let their hair grow to adorn themselves for sin ' [men
is very likely a mistake here for women). The other
classes of sinners were these :
Others hanging by their eyes. Followed their eyes to sin.
By their noses. Perfumed themselves to sin.
By their tongues. Had slandered.
By their hands. Had stolen.
Ignominiously.
By their feet. Led men to sin.
Women hanging by their Had exposed them to make
breasts. men sin.
Men fried on fiery coals. Had blasphemed.
Men fed on gall, etc. Had eaten on fast days.
{b) " There are five kinds of punishments in hell,
and Isaiah the son of Amoz saw them all. He entered
the first compartment and saw there two men carrying
pails full of water on their shoulders, and they pour
that water into a pit which never fills. Isaiah said to
God, ' O thou who unveilest all that is hidden, unveil
to me the secret of this.' And the spirit of the Lord
answered, ' These are the men who coveted the property
of their neighbours, and this is their punishment.'
The formula is the same in the next three sections.
Men hanging by their tongues. Slanderers.
Hanging ignominiously.
Women hanging by their Attracted the gaze of men.
breasts.
" The fifth section is not of the same form. The com-
partment is full of smoke and the princes, chiefs and
great men are in it, presided over by Pharaoh."
It will be noticed that the former of these visions
THE OLD TESTAMENT
57
is actually connected with Elijah and is closer to the
Latin fra|:;ni('nt than the second.
My other fragment was printed in the Joiirnal
Asiatiquc, 1917, p. 454, by Abbe F. Nau from a Paris
MS. (gr. 4) of the thirteenth century. It occurs along
with an extract from the Revelation of (psciido) Methodius,
and some descriptions of Antichrist from Chrysostom
and from the Bible and elsewhere.
" It is contained in apocryphal writings that Elias
the prophet spake concerning Antichrist, of what aspect
he is to appear at that time. His head a flame of fire :
his right eye mingled with blood, but the left bright
(xapoTTorr) liaving two pupils : his eyebrows (-lashes)
white, and his lower lip large : his right thigh thin
and his feet broad, and the great toe of his foot hath
been broken."
Something nearly identical with this description of
Antichrist is to be found in several other places, in the
Testament of fhe Lord (Syriac) xi., in the Testament
in Galilee (ed. Guerrier and Grebaut, Ethiopic), 6, and
in a Latin fragment from Treves printed by me in
Apocrypha anecdoia (i., p. 153). I show them in tabular
form.
Test, of the Lord
His head as a burn-
ing flame.
Kight eye mingled
with blood.
Left eye of a blue-
grey or green
colour having tvvo
pupils.
Eyelashes white.
Lower lip large.
Right thigh thin.
Feet broad.
Great toe broken
and oblong (or
thin).
He is the scythe
of desolation.
Test, in Galilee
Head as a flame of
fire.
Right eye mingled
with blood.
Left eye dead. The
two pupils of the
eyes are <gap>
White in his eye-
lids.
Lower lip large.
Omitted.
Toes and joints of
his feet twisted.
He is the scythe of
perdition.
Latin Fragment
His eyes "fellini^'
like a cat's ( ?).
Right eye mingled
with blood.
Left eye joyful
[gaudens — xapoTro'ff) .
Eyelashes white.
Lower lip large.
t His legs lean.
Omitted.
Great toe broken.
He is the scythe of
UBbUldUUll,
58 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
The portion of the two Testaments which contains
this description is generally taken to be a separate
Apocalypse. In each case it is followed by matter of
a quite different kind, in the Testament of the Lord by
rules of ecclesiastical practice, in the Testament in Galilee
by an Epistle of the Apostles. It does occur separately
in Syriac in a Cambridge MS. edited by Arendzen (in
Jour. TJieol. Stud., ii., 1901, p. 401). The only notable
variant in the description of Antichrist which this
presents is at the end (" his feet broad and his little
finger large as a sickle — that is, the sickle of desolation " ) ,
and this is probably a mistake.
Cap. XI. of this Apocalypse deals with the mis-
fortunes of individual countries — Syria, Cilicia, and so
on (this is omitted in Arendzen' s text), and as
Arendzen remarks in his preface (see also Bidez in his
edition of Philostorgius), the description comes very
close to that given by Philostorgius in his Church
History of the actual events of the early part of the
fifth century. The Apocalypse is not, in any case,
as a whole, very early in date, and there is no reason
to doubt that it incorporated older material, and that
some of this came from the Apocalypse of Eli as.
The description of Antichrist which we have here is but one
of miiny. The late Greek Apocalypses of Esdras and of John
edited by Tischendorf contain another, or rather two others
(one in MSS. of both Esdras and John, the other in a Venice
MS. of John), which may as well be given :
Esdras-John John (Venice MS.)
The likeness of his face is ,
dark.
The hairs of his head sharp' as The hairs of his head like
arrows. sharpened arrows.
His eyebrows like a field. His teeth a span long.
His right eye like the morning His legs like a cock's.
star.
The other immovable {oy like The sole of his feet two spans
a lion's). long.
His mouth about a cubit long. His eyebrows full of all foul-
His teeth a span long.
His fingers like sickleg. O^^i^ forehead a writing
ness and roughness.
his forel
RSRehrist,
TIIF. OLD TESTAMENT 59
Esdra^-johii John (Venice MS.)
The sole of his feet two spans Holding in his right hand a
long. cup of death.
On his forehead a writing : One eye like the morning star,
AnticlinsF. " the other like a lion's (it
Sometimes he will become a was " quenched " when he
child. fell, by Christ).
And sometimes an old man.
The Armenian Seventh Vision of Daniel (tr. Issaverdens,
p. ^45) says :
" The joints of his knees are stiff, he is crippled in body,
smooth-browed, crooked-lingered, long-headed, charming, boast-
ful, intelligent, etc., etc."
.\ Latin text, a prophecy of our Lord addressed to St. Matthew,
which I have only found in one MS. {Corpus Chr. Coll. Camb.,
404, f. 7 (fourteenth century); see my Catalogue, ii. 270),
says : "His appearance {posit io) will be, a thin and tall man,
with thin feet, having long hair and .a long face and a long nose,
with cat's eyes : f iri the lower parts f having lost one tooth,
in the upper marked with leprosy, having a white part in the
hair on his forehead. These his marks will be unchangeable,
but in the others he will be able to' change himself." This
shows interesting coincidences with the Latin fragment and
with the Coptic and Hebrew Elias (below). It is corrupt, some
words having apparently dropped out.
Similar descriptions also occur in late Hebrew Apocalypses
such as the Book of Zerubbabel (see Bossuet, Antichrist, p. 102):
the Midrash Vajoscha says, " He will be bald, and have one
eye large and one small, his right arm will be a span long and
his left two and a half ells : on his forehead will be leprosy, his
right ear will be stopped up and his left open."
But to come nearer to the point again. We have
two Apocalypses of Elias, and in each of tlicni is a
description of Antichrist : only neither agrees with
that which we have read in the Greek fragment.
The first, which is almost complete, is in Coptic,
existing in imperfect MSS. in two dialects, Achmimic
and Sahidic, edited by Steindorff (1899). A very small
bit of it (corresponding to 11. 6-13 of p. 169) has been
found in a Greek papyrus [Papiri greet e latini, Florence,
1912, No. 7). It consists of two parts : the beginning
is moral and didactic, and speaks of fasting and so on ;
then there is an abrupt change, and the text continues :
" Concerning the King of the Assyrians and the dis-
solution of the Heaven and Earth : My people shall not
6o THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
be overpowered, saith the Lord, and shall not need to
be afraid in war." And the rest is wholly eschato-
logical : rise and fall of kings, appearances of Antichrist :
his conflict with Tabitha, death of Elias (!) and Enoch,
the end of the world, are treated in detail. The
introduction of Elias is, to say the least, inartistic.
The description of Antichrist is this : " He is little . . .
young, thin-legged, on his forehead is a place of white
hair . . . his eyebrows stretch to his ears, he has
marks of leprosy in his hands. He will change himself
before them that look on him, will become a child and
an old man . . . will change in all his marks ; but
the marks on his head . . . will not be able to be
changed." There are more coincidences here with the
Esdras-John descriptions than with the Greek fragment.
The other Apocalypse of Elias is a late Hebrew one
edited by Buttenwieser (1897), who believes that events
of about A.D. 260 are described in it : I should be
surprised if it were really so ancient, in its present
rather incoherent form, but it probably has some
connexion with the older Apocalypse. Especially, I.
think, does this apply to the opening, the substance of
which is this :
" The Spirit took me up and bore me to the South :
I saw a high place burning with fire, which none could
enter.
" It bore me to the East : there I saw stars fighting
with each other unceasingly.
" It bore me to the West : there I saw how souls
suffered judgment in great torments, each one according
to his deeds.
" Then Michael revealed to me the End."
Then we plunge into prophecy, with names of kings
and cities, days of the month, and large hosts, whose
numbers are given. Near the beginning is the descrip-
tion of Antichrist. " These will be his signs, as Daniel
beheld him : his face is long, on his forehead he has
baldness (?), and he is of very high stature, and his
feet are high, and his legs are thin."
The first sentence reads like a summary of a longer
THE OLD TESTAMItNT 6i
writiiif^, and the words I have ilahci/.cd show where
soinetliing hke our Latin fragment might have come in.
It is quite probable, I think, that the original Apoca-
lypse contained all the ingredients that the fragments
show us, descriptions of hell-torments, eschatological
prophecy, descriptions of Antichrist and didactic matter.
But neither of the extant Apocalypses can be supposed
to represent the old book faithfully. The Coptic has
been Christianized, the Hebrew abridged, and additions
made to both.
In the Lives of the Prophets, attributed to Epi-
[)hanius, there is a bit of legend about Elijah which
reads as if it might have originally stood in an apocryphal
book. That apocryphal literature was to some extent
employed by the writer of these Lives is considered
probable or even certain by their latest editor, Scher-
mann, on the evidence of the sections relating to
Isaiah and Jeremiah, though, for much of the non-
Biblical detail, current Jewish tradition may be
responsible.
The life of Elias begins : " He was of Thesbis, of the
land of the Arabs, of the tribe of Aaron, dwelling in
Galaad ; for Thesbis was a gift, given to the priests.
And when his mother bore him, Sobac his father saw
a vision, that men shining in white spoke to him (the
child), and that they swaddled him in fire and gave
him a flame of fire to eat. And he went to Jerusalem
and told the priests, and the oracle said : Fear not,
for the habitation of this child shall be light, and his
word a decree, and he shall judge Israel in the sword
and in fire."
Another legend, common to Chrysostom {in Peintm
et Eliam) and the Armenian Life of Elias (tr. Issaverdens) ,
may well be only an embellishment of the Bible narra-
tive. It is that at the sacrifice on Carmel the priests
of Baal secreted a man under their altar with orders
to light the fire at the proper moment, but that he
was either suffocated or died at the word of Elias,
who divined his presence,
62 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
Jeremiah
All the four major prophets have had spurious books
fathered upon them. For Isaiah we have the extant
Ascension of Isaiah; for Jeremiah the Paralipomcna
of Jeremiah, current in Greek, Ethiopic, and Armenian,
and edited by Dr. Rendel Harris under its alternative
title, The Rest of the Words of Baruch. We. have also
some scattered quotations attributeci to him. In
Matt, xxvii. 9 the prophecy, " And they took the thirty
pieces of silver," etc., is, as we all know, assigned to
Jeremiah. Origen {in loc.) suspects either a mistake
(Jeremiah for Zechariah) or the existence of some
apocryphal writing of Jeremiah in which the words
occurred. Jerome {in loc.) had actually seen such a
thing. " I lately read in a Hebrew book, which a
Hebrew of the Nazarene sect showed me, an apocryph
of Jeremiah in which I found this, word for word."
We know of no continuous text comprising these words,
but there is current in Ethiopic, usually appended to
the canonical Book of Jeremiah, a short prophecy,
which Dillmann prints and translates in his Chresto-
mathia Mtkiopica, p. viii. I believe it to exist also in
Coptic.
" A Prophecy of Jeremiah. And Jeremiah spake
thus unto Pashur : But ye all your days fight against
the truth, with your fathers and your sons that shall
come after you. And they shall commit a sin more
damnable than you : they shall sell him who hath
no price, and shall hurt him who will heal pain,
and shall condemn him who will forgive sin, and
shall take thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that
was valued, whom the children of Israel shall sell,, and
shall give that money for (into) the potter's field. As
the Lord commanded me, so I speak. And therefore
shall there come upon them judgment and destruction
for ever, and upon their sons after them, because in
their judgment they have shed innocent blood."
Nothing can be more obvious than that this was
written to set right the difficulty caused by the mention
THE OLD TESTAMENT 63
of Jeremiah in the Gospel. It may quite well be identi-
cal with the writing seen by Jerome. His interest in
such things was not lively enough to make him use
accurate language : he is oftener contemptuous and
angrv when apocryphal writings come into his ken.
E})h. V. 14, " Awake, thou that sleepest," etc., is said
by George the Syncellus to be quoted " from what are
called the Apocrypha of Jeremiah," and this attribu-
tion is found in a marginal note in some MSS. of the
Epistles : one authority names the ParaUpomcna of
Jeremiah, but, though an important part of that story
is the seventy years' sleep of Ebed-melech and his
awaking at the Return of the People from Babylon,
the words of Ephesians are not in our texts of this book.
Hippolytus [on Antichrist, 65) quotes them as said by
" the prophet," and [on Daniel iv. 56) as from Isaiah,
We have seen that Epiphanius assigns them to Elias.
Then there is a passage which Justin Martyr {Dial,
ic'iih Trypho) accuses the Jews of having deleted from
the Book of Jeremiah. He says it w^s still to be found
in some synagogue copies, so that its deletion must
have been recent. Irenseus also quotes it not less than
four times in varying forms, once as from Isaiah, once
as from Jeremiah, and twice without naming the
prophet. Justin's form, the only one we have in
Greek, is :
" And the Lord God of Israel remembered the dead
which slept in the dust of the earth, and came down
unto them to preach (evangelize) His salvation."
In the Latin Acts of St. James the Great, which form
Book IV of the so-called Historia Apostolica of Abdias,
in a speech of St. James to the Jews, several Messianic
prophecies are quoted, and among them this :
" Jeremiah adds : Behold, O Jerusalem, thy
redeemer cometh, and this shall be his sign. He shall
open the eyes of the blind and restore hearing to the
deaf, and by his voice he shall raise the dead."
In a similar anti-Jewish oration of St. Silvester in
his Acts (I quote from the text of George Cedrenus) is
this :
64 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
" And that He shall be buried also, Jeremias saith :
By (in) his burying the dead shall be made alive."
Of these three obviously Christian passages it is
difficult to say whether all are taken from an apocryphal
book or were Christian interpolations into the text of
the LXX. To the Justin passage this last explanation
probably does apply. As to the Silvester passage, I
note that it immediately follows one from Esdras
which is to be found in the best text of 4 Esdras i.
This is a presumption (slight enough) in favour of the
view that it was at least not invented by the writer of
the Acts. As to the quotation in St. James's Acts, I
am left quite doubtful : but here again it is the only
prophecy cited which cannot be found in the Bible.
EZEKIEL
More is to be said about Ezekiel. I have elsewhere
(/. T. S. XV. 236, 1914) put together what I could
find on the subject of the apocryphal Book of Ezekiel.
The passages shall be translated here.
The most important is a parable which is quoted by
Epiphanius {Heer. Ixiv. 10), who is writing against
the Origenists and discussing the resurrection of the
body. " For the dead shall rise and they that are in
the sepulchre shall be raised," says the prophet (cf.
Isa. xxvi. 19). And, for I must not pass over in
silence what is said by Ezekiel the prophet in his own
apocryphal book {i. e. that under his name) about
resurrection, I wiU quote the very passage here. For,
telling a story in cryptic (enigmatic) guise, he says
about the just judgment in which soul and body both
share, that a certain King had all the men in his kingdom
enrolled in the army and had no " pagan " (" civilian,"
we should say), but two only, one lame and one blind,
and each abode separately and dwelt apart. And the
King made a marriage-feast for his own son and invited
all that were in his kingdom, but neglected the two
pagani, the lame man and the blind. And they were
angry in themselves and set about contriving a design
THE OLD TESTyVMENT 65
against the King. Now the King had a garden : and
the bhnd man called out from a distance to the lame
man and said, " How much would the breaking of our
bread have been (What would have been the extra
cost of entertaining us) with the multitudes that are
in\-itcd to the merry-making ? Come then, and as he
hath done to us, let us requite him." The other asked,
" In what way?" and he said, " Let us go into his
garden and destroy the things there." But he said,
" And how can I, who am lame and cannot walk?"
and the blind man said, " What can I myself do, who
cannot see whither I am going? but let us devise
means." (Then the lame man) plucked the grass that
was near him and plaited a rope and threw it to the
blind man and said, " Catch hold of it and come along
the rope hither to me." And when he had done as
he was told and was come to the place^ the lame man
said, " Come, be feet to me and carry' me, and I will
be eyes to thee from above and guide thee to the
right hand and the left." And so they did, and went
down to the garden. Then, for the rest, whether they
spoiled it or not, at all events their tracks were to be
seen in the garden. And when the feasters dispersed
from the marriage, they went into the garden and were
enraged at finding the tracks there, and reported it to
the King, saying, " We are all soldiers in thy kingdom,
and there is no paganus. Whence, then, are the track
of pagani in the garden? " And he marvelled. And
as the parable — that of the apocryphal book, I mean —
puts it, it applies to a man, but God is not ignorant of
anything. But the story saj's that the King sent for
the lame and the blind man, and asked the blind man,
"Didst thou go down into the garden?" And he
said, " Alas, Lord ! thou seest our infirmity : thou
knowest that I cannot see where I walk." Then he
came to the lame man and asked him, " Didst thou go
down into my garden?" and he answered and said,
" O Lord, wouldest thou afflict my soul in respect of
my infirmity?" And then the judgment was at a
standstill. What, then, does the j ust j udge do ? Having
66 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
discerned in what manner the two were yoked together,
he sets the lame man on the bhnd man's back, and
examines both of them with scourges, and they cannot
deny the fact. Each convicts the other, the lame
man saying to the blind, " Didst thou not bear me
and carry me off? " and the bhnd to the lame, " Didst
not thou thyself become eyes to me ? " In like manner,
the body is joined with the soul and the soul with the
body to convict them of their deeds done in common,
and the judgment becomes complete from (for) both
of them, body and soul, of the works they have done,
whether good or bad.
A little later on Epiphanius returns to the parable
and probably embodies in what he says the gist of the
interpretation of it.
He says : God cannot separate the soul from the
body for the purpose of final judgment. " For immedi-
ately the judgment will be found at a standstill. For
if the soul be found all by itself, it would reply when
judged, ' The cause of sin is not of me, but of that
corruptible and earthly body, in fornication, adultery,
lasciviousness. For since it left me, I have done none
of these things,' and it will have a good defence and
will paralyze the judgment of God. . . . The body
cannot be judged apart from the soul : for it also could
reply, saying, ' It was not I that sinned, it was the
soul : have I, since it departed from me, committed
adultery, fornicated, or worshipped idols ? ' and the
body will be withstanding the justice of God, and with
reason. On this account, therefore . . . God . . . brings
our dead bodies and our souls to a second birth," etc.
This parable is found current in Rabbinic tradition.
Three versions of it are given in a book by Fiebig
{Die Gleichnisreden Jesu im Lichte der Rahhinischcn
Gleichnisse der N.T. lichen Zeitalters, p. 73). One is
ascribed to R. Ishmael {cir. a.d. 130), the other two to
R. Jehuda {cir. 200). Here the lame and blind are
custodians of the King's garden and their transgres-
sion is eating the choice early fruits. There is nothing
about the wedding-feast or the soldiers and pagani.
Till-: OLD TESTA MliXT 67
The application is the same. The soul will say. " I
have not sinned ; it is the body. Since I came out from
it I have been like a pure bird that flies in the air."
The body says, " I have not sinned; it is the soul.
Since it went forth from me I have been like a stone
that is thrown on the ground."
Whether this is a later or an earlier form of the
story than Ezekiel's, it seems to me an inferior one.
The next fragment is very short. Tertullian {de
Ccviic Chrisli, 23) says : " We read indeed in Ezekiel
about that cow which bare and bare not : but consider
whether the Holy Spirit did not even then blame 3?ou
by that utterance, foreseeing that you would dispute
over the womb of Mary."
We have the quotation elsewhere, but only here is
the source of it named. Thus P3piphanius (//ar.
XXX. 20) : " Behold, the virgin shall be with child
and bear a son." He said not, " Behold, the woman " :
and again in another place he saith, " And the heifer
shall bear, and they shall say. ' She hath not borne ' ;
for because some of the Manichceans and Marcionites
say, ' He was not born,' therefore is it said, ' She shall
bear,' and they shall say, ' She hath not borne.' "
The old Acts of Peter, 29, quote several prophecies
(including one from the Ascension of Isaiah) : " And
again he saith, ' She hath borne and hath not borne,' "
is one of these.
Clement of Alexandria {Str. vii. 16, p. 66, Stahelin)
has the same words, with " saith the Scripture."
Gregory of Nyssa {Adversus Jitd.ros, 3), " And again :
Behold, the heifer hath borne and hath not borne."
Tertullian' s words seem to imply that there was
some story attached to the saying. It might very well
have been a parable. In fact, as it stands it is a
parable. I do not see that it can have been anything
but Christian; the application to the Virgin-Birth
must have been intended by the writer.
A third phrase which is quoted again and again by
Fathers of all ages, and sometimes as a saying of
Christ's, is attributed in the Life of St. Antony to Ezekiel,
F
68 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
and by a later writer to a prophet. It is " Wherein
I find thee, therein will I judge thee." It does not
give any key to its context, notable as it is in itself.
Clement of Rome [ad Cor. viii.) has this :
" As I live, saith the Lord, I desire not the death of
the sinner so much as his repentance " (this is from
Ezek. xviii.), adding also a good sentence : " Repent ye,
O house of Israel, of your iniquity. Say unto the
children of my people : If your sins be from the earth
even unto the heaven, and if they be redder than scarlet
and blacker than sackcloth, and ye turn unto me with
your whole heart and say ' Father,' I will hearken unto
you as unto a holy people." This is not in our texts
of Ezekiel : it may be a later amplification thereof.
Clement of Alexandria also quotes : "If your sins,"
etc., in Padag. i. lo, as from Ezekiel. Compare also
his Quis Dives salvetur, 39, where he has the former part
of the passage, somewhat expanded. Under the head-
ing of Eldad and Medad I gave a prophetical passage
which Clement of Rome and the Second Epistle both
use. I am inclined to think that Resch may be right
in assigning it, as well as that which has just been cited,
to the apocryphal Ezekiel. The terms of it, as was
said above, seem more appropriate to Israel in Exile
than to Israel in the Wilderness. Resch assigns
several other quotations in i and 2 Clement to the
same book, but with less plausibility.
The Lives of the Prophets (Pseudo-Epiphanius) have
several legends about Ezekiel ; more, in fact, than
about any other of the prophets. He was of the land
of Sarira. The chief of the people in the place of his
sojourn in Babylon slew him because he was rebuked
by him for the worship of idols. He gave a sign to the
people that they should observe the river Chobar;
if its water failed they were to expect the sickle of
desolation (a designation of Antichrist which we have
had already) to the ends of the earth : if the water
overflowed, that signified their return to Jerusalem :
and this happened. He is buried in the land of the
Syrians, and many resorted to his tomb in prayer.
TlilC OLD TESTAMENT 69
l^pon the occasion of such a concourse of Jews, the
Chaldeans feared a rising and plotted to come and
slaughter them. The prophet made the waters of the
river stand, that the Israelites might cross it and
escape. Their pursuers were drowned.
hy his prayer, in a time of famine, he procured them
a sudden and miraculous sup})ly of fish, and raised many
to life who had died. When their enemies attacked
them, he obstructed them by portents and they ceased
from troubling.
In Babylon he judged the tribes of Dan and (iad,
who were impious and persecuted the followers of the
Law, and wrought this miracle, that serpents devoured
tiieir children and their cattle. And he predicted that
on their account the people should not return to
Jerusalem, but should be in Media until the end of their
transgression. And of those tribes was the man who
slew him : for they withstood him until the day of his
death.
What I have omitted in this abstract is a descrip-
tion of Ezekiel's tomb, and some traits evidently taken
from the canonical book. Most of what I have given
does not appear anywhere else : it may be based on
current tradition. The one point that does occur
elsewhere is Ezekiel's violent death. In the Syriac
Ads of Philip, the Apocalypse of Paul and the Imperfect
IVofk on Matthew (a remarkable Arian commentary
of the fifth century, rather rich in apocryphal quota-
tions), it is said that he was dragged by his feet upon
the mountains until his brains were dashed out. Origen
also, in a passage to be quoted later (under Zechnriah),
speaks of Ezekiel's martyrdom as being related in
apocryphal writings. In almost the only picture I know
of his death (fifteenth-century glass in St. Martin's, Coney
Street, York) he is hung by his armpits on a gibbet
and two men are tormenting him. This has no old
authority behind it that I can discover.
The analogy of the Ascension of Isaiah and the Parali-
pomena of feremiah suggests the possibility that in the
apocryphal Ezekiel the climax of the story was that
70 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
Ezekiel was put to death, perhaps by being dragged
over the mountains, as a result of uttering a Christian
prophecy, it may be the prophecy or parable about
the heifer.
Daniel
Of Daniel I will take leave to say but little. Im-
bedded somewhere in the apocryphal Seventh Vision
or Apocalypse, of which we have versions in Greek,
Coptic, Armenian and other tongues, there may lurk
quite old elements : but, as we have them, the texts
are of very late complexion. There are legendary lives
of Daniel, too, c. g. one in Persian : and there is a
Passion of Daniel and the Three Children in Greek,
which tells how all four were beheaded by a tyrant
Atticus, a successor of Nebuchadnezzar. It is a curious
tale, to which little attention has been paid. There
is an abstract of it, with a picture, in the great illus-
trated Menology of Basil in the Vatican.
If I am asked which of these documents is meant
by the " pseudepigrapha of Daniel" in the lists, I
should hazard the answer that it is an old form of the
Seventh Vision.
The Dreamhook or Somniarium of this prophet is also
quite old : it exists in many forms and languages.
Usually it is an alphabetical list of objects that are
likely (in the compiler's opinion) to be dreamt about,
with an indication of the meaning of each. A short
preface opens it, the gist of which is that the princes
and all the people of Babylon begged Daniel to explain
to them the dreams which they saw, and he sat down
and wrote this book.
We pass to the minor prophets. Only three names
out of the twelve seem to have attracted the makers
of apocryphal books : Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Zechariah.
Habakkuk
Habakkuk' s apocryphon, whatever it was, is lumped
together in the lists with those of Baruch, Ezekiel and
THE OLD TESTAMENT 71
I)anKl, ;iiicl \\r .i^allKT iiutliing uf its iKLturc or its
length, 'riurc is only one fact known to nic which
can be imagined to throw any light upon it, and that
is that in the LXX the addition to Daniel known as
the Story of Bel and the Dragon has a title : " From the
prophecy of Hambacum the son of Jesus, of the tribe
of Le\i." This is found only in the unicpie Chigi MS.
of the true Septuagint \'ersion of Daniel (all other
Greek MSS. giving that of Theodotion) and in the
Ambrosian (Milan) Syriac Hexa])lar MS. It stands,
then, very nuich alone, but there is no sound reason
for doubting that tlie story which it heads did occur
in a book attributed to Habakkuk. Indeed, if we
compare the LXX and Theodotion versions of v. 33,
we shall see something that may serve to confirm the
title. Theodotion has : " And Habacum the prophet
was in Judaea," etc. The LXX : " And it came to
pass on the sixth day that Hambacum had bread
broken up in a bowl," etc. In the former he is intro-
duced as the prophet, and it is found necessary to say
where he was : in the latter he and his abode appear
to be already known to the reader. It is a slight indica-
tion, but I think it is a real one. If the Septuagint' s
title may be trusted, we infer that the Habakkuk book
had a considerable narrative element in it.
Tlie Pseudo-Epiphanian Lives of the Prophets have a
fairly copious account of Habakkuk. They say : He
was of Bethzouchar, of the tribe of Simeon (this dis-
agrees with the Chigi MS.). When Nebuchadnezzar
invaded the land he fled to Ostrakinc, and was a
sojourner in the land of Ismael. He returned later to
his home and ministered to the reapers : as he cooked
food for them he prophesied to his own people and
said, " I shall go to a land far off and return quickly :
but if I tarry, take the food to the reapers," and he
was at Babylon and gave the dinner to Daniel in the
den of hons, and returned, and told no man what had
happened : but he understood that the people would
quickly return from Babylon to Jerusalem.
He gave a sign to them of Judaea, that they should
■J2 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
see a great light shining in the temple, and so shoukl
see the glory of God : and concerning the end of the
temple, that it should come to pass by means of a
western nation : then the veil of the Daber should be
rent into two pieces and the capitals of the two pillars
taken away, and no man should know where they
were, but they should be carried by angels into the
wilderness, where the tabernacle was set up at first.
And in them shall the J^ord be known at the end, and
shall enlighten them that are persecuted by the serpent,
as it was from the beginning. And the Lord shall save
them from darkness and the shadow of death and shall
be in an holy tabernacle. This prophet prophesied
much about the coming of the Lord ; he died two
years before the return of the people from Babylon,
and was buried with honour in his own field.
Solomon of Basrah (thirteenth century) says : " The
Jews stoned him in Jerusalem."
Some of the above matter has the air of being ex-
tracted from a book of prophecy ; and it is more detailed
by far than the accounts of some other prophets, c. g.
Zephaniah and Haggai ; but I cannot feel at all con-
fident that it really does preserve pieces of the pseud-
epigraphs of Habakkuk.
Zephaniah
For Zephaniah we are better off. In the first place
we have a definite title. Apocalypse of Sophonias, and a
stichometry — 600 lines. We also have an express
quotation. Clement of Alexandria {Sir., v. 11, 77)
says : Is not this (a passage from an Epistle of Plato)
like what is said by Sophonias the prophet? " And the
spirit took me up and carried me into the fifth heaven,
and I beheld angels that are called Lords (and their
diadem was set upon them in the holy spirit, and the
throne of each of them seven times brighter than the
light of the sun as it shineth), dwelling in temples of
salvation and singing hymns to God unspeakable.
Most High." This myst, one would say, be an extract
TIM': f)I.I) TICSTAMICNT 73
from an account of a progress tlirough the seven
heavens, such as we have in the Ascciisiu)i of Isaiah,
the Tcstamoit of Levi, the (ircek Bariich Apocalypse,
and the Secrets of Enoch. Each heaven, it is indicated,
is inhabited by a different order of angels : the Lords
(/vi'pi(m;rffr, dominations, of St. Paul) arc in the fifth.
The i)assage does not exactly coincide with any other
description : there is, indeed, nothing very distinctive
about it except the mention of the Lords. Yet it does
tell us something of the nature of the book whence it
is taken.
We have also an Apocalypse of Zephaniah in a frag-
mentary state in two Egyptian dialects, Achmimic
and Sahidic. The larger piece is in Achmimic : of the
Sahidic there is but one leaf. The editor, Steindorff,
calls the Achmimic an " anonymous Apocalypse" ; it
is true that the name of Zephaniah does not occur in
it (as it does in the Sahidic), but the coincidences of
language between the two are numerous, and I believe
it is the settled conviction of most who have studied
the book (it is certainly my own) that the Achmimic
is part of the same text as the Sahidic.
In neither of them does Clement's extract occur.
But the text is very strangely dislocated and incoherent,
and one is tempted to believe that the pages of the
Greek manuscript which the translator was using were
not in the right order. Whether that is so or not, the
Egyptian version cannot represent the original very
faithfully.
The main points of the longer fragment are these.
It begins with a badly mutilated passage which I
interpret as a vision of a deathbed of a righteous man
(like that in the Apocalypse of Paul). Then, in company
with an angel, the seer goes through a city and beholds
two men walking together, two women grinding to-
gether, and one on a bed (cf. Lc. xvii. 34-36 : what
happens to them we do not learn). The whole earth
is seen like a single drop of water. Something is then
said of a vision of torment. Next he is taken to Mount
Seir, and sees the three wicked sons of the priest
74 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
Joatham, and the recording angels weeping over them.
Then there is a vision of angels of torment, followed
by a very obscure passage in which gates of brass and
a lake of fire figure. A great and monstrous spirit- —
the Accuser — is seen, and the seer in terror prays to
be delivered, as Israel, and vSusanna, and the Three
Children were delivered. The chief recording angel,
Eremiel, appears and shows the prophet a roll in which
all his sins — failures to visit the widow and orphan,
or to admonish the children of Israel — are recorded,
and another in which probably were his good deeds.
But here is a gap of two pages, and we next find him
escorted by angels in a ship to a heavenly land. (This
feature is in the Apocalypse of Paul.) He meets the
righteous, and also sees various forms of torment.
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob intercede (daily) for the
sinners. The text ends in a speech of an angel who
is describing what will happen at the last day.
The single leaf, or rather page, of the Sahidic MS.
(one side is almost wholly illegible) contains only a
vision of angels tormenting a soul. There is also the
line : " Verily I Sophonias beheld this in the vision."
On the perished verso of the leaf a few words can be
read, among which is " drop of water," a hint that
we have here the text (see above) in which the whole
earth is seen like a single drop of water. A good deal
of the Coptic book is Christian or Christianized. Unless
other pieces turn up, we shall not be able to say for
certain whether it is identical with the book which
Clement had read ; but the chances are much in favour
of an affirmative answer.
Zechariah
The Apocalypse of Zacharias (Zacharias the father of
John, as two of the texts call him) was 500 lines in
length. The question of its character is bound up
with the question whether the Minor Prophet or the
father of John the Baptist was the putative author.
A. Berendts, who wrote a special study on the subject
Till': OiJ) Tl'LSTAMlCNT 75
(1805), was decidedly of opinion that the father of John
\v;)s meant, anid that the book contained an expanded
form of the narrative of Herod's shiying Zaeliarias
whicli we now read in the latter chapters of the Prot-
evaiigcliiini or Book of James. He thought, moreover,
that in a Slavonic writing, which he translated, he had
discovered the actual book named in the lists. This
narrative is wholly legendary and not apocalyptic.
The attention of Bcrendts had not been called to a
jxissage — a note of Origen on Ephcs. iv. 27 — which was
printed in 1902 in the Journal of Theological Studies
(iii. 554). " We give place to the devil, or to the
prevailing spirit that comes up upon us, when the
guiding i)rinciple in us has not been filled with holy
learning or saving faith and excellent thoughts which
counsel us for the best : for according to Zacharias the
father of John, ' Satan tabernacles over (or, we might
say, hovers over) the climates (K-At/xaTa, regions?,
inclinations?) of the soul,' and such concessions to the
worse things . . . challenge the devil to enter into
our souls."
This sentence is not of a kind which would fit easily
into such a narrative as Bcrendts has produced : it is
rather such as might be looked for in an Apocalypse.
Certainly Origen does seem to have been acquainted
with a writing about the father of John which we do
not possess. A comment of his on Matt, xxiii. 35
says, " a tradition to this effect has come down to us,"
that Zacharias allowed Mary to take her place among
the virgins in the Temple after the birth of Christ,
on the ground that she was still a virgin, and that
he was slain by the men of that generation as a trans-
gressor of the Law, between the Temple and the altar.
He also says, in the Latin version of his commentary
on Matthew, " It is said in apocryphal writings that
Isaiah was sawn in sunder, and that Zacharias was
slain, and Ezekiel." Jerome on Matthew (xxiii. 35)
may be drawing from Origen when he writes, " Others
will have it that Zacharias the father of John is meant ;
they prove from some dream of apocryphal writings
76 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
(he generally calls them somnid or deliramenia apocry-
phoruni) that he was slain because he prophesied the
coming of the Saviour. This, having no Scriptural
authorit}^ can be as readily rejected as proved."
Coupled with the evidence of the note on Ephesians,
these passages seem to support Berendts's view that
the principal Zacharias-apocryph did relate to the father
of John. There may very well have been prophetical
passages in it.
I find it more difficult to agree with him in his
identification of it with the Slavonic document. That,
however, is worth summarizing here for the interest
of the story.
In the fortieth year of Herod's reign, Joseph was
warned by the angel Saphodamuel to flee into Egypt,
where the family lived twelve months in the house of
Alpheus, a man of God.
The massacre of the Innocents followed. Elizabeth
fled with John. Zacharias was questioned about the
child, and slain (as in Protev. xxii. ff.). Elizabeth was
sheltered within a rock by Uriel, and fed.
After four months Gabriel brought Jesus to the
Temple, and Uriel brought John : Michael and Raphael
also came ; and in the midst appeared God, and the
corpse of Zacharias. God breathed life into it. Jesus
made a spring of water rise up in the Temple and
from it baptized John, and Zacharias.
Thereafter Zacharias fell asleep again and was buried
by the angels before the altar. Gabriel and Uriel bore
away Jesus and John. The story concludes with the
weaning of John, and his life in the wilderness, and
the return from Egypt.
That it is an old tale is more than likely, for it seems
a sound view that it has been incorporated into the
Protcvangelium and not extracted from it. But it
seems to belong rather to the John Baptist cycle of
legend than to that of Zacharias ; and in the book we
are seeking for, Zacharias ought to be the centre of
interest, and not, as here, a rather subordinate figure.
To put the matt§r in another way, this legend strikes
Till-: OLD TESTAMENT 77
me rather as the l)cginning of a Hfc of John than as the
conchision of a Hfe of his father.
W'l- ha\e thus no clear evidence that there was an
apocryphal book of the minor prophet Zcchariah.
A story given by Sozonien (lib. ix. Hisl. Eccl.) of the
hnding of the body of Zechariah in his time shall be
mentioned, only to be dismissed.
It is to the effect that, with the body, the remains
of a child in princely robes and crown were found;
and when questions were asked as to the meaning of
this, Zacharias Abbot of Gerara produced an un-
canonical Hebrew book, in which it was recorded that
on the sev^enth day after King Joash had slain Zechariah
(the son of Jehoiada) his favoinite child died : he
recognized that this blow was a divine judgment, and
had the boy buried in the prophet's grave. The story
does not concern our Zecliariah, and the book, whatever
it was, was not supposed to be written by any one of
the name.
Baruch
Baruch is the only other name in the lists which
remains to be dealt with. We have plcntv of books
attributed to him besides that in our official Apocrypha ;
there is the Syriac Apocalypse and the Greek one (both
of which are to be found in Dr. Charles's Psciidcpi(;rapha),
and also the Rest of (lie Words of Baruch or Paralipomena
of fcremiah, which has been edited by Dr. Rendel Harris :
a translation of the Armenian version is in Issaverdens'
collection. Justin the Gnostic — a heretic onl}* known
from the treatise of Hippolytus — had a book setting
forth his peculiar system, in which an angelic being
named Baruch figured, and the book bore his name ;
but that is hardly relevant here. There is an Ethiopic
Apocalypse never printed (Brit. Mus., Add. MS. 16,223)
which, Dillmann says, deals in part with the history of
the Abyssinian Church.
There are also scattered quotations not traceable in
the e.xisting books of Baruch,
(fl) Cyprian, Testimonia iii. 29 (not in all MSS.), has
78 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
this citation from Baruch : " For the time shall come
when ye and those that come after you shall seek me,
desiring to hear a word of wisdom and understanding,
and shall not find it. But nations shall desire to see
a wise man, and it shall not happen to them. Not
that the wisdom of this world shall be lacking or shall
fail the earth, neither shall the word of the law be
wanting to the world. P^or wisdom shall be among a
few that keep watch and are silent and talk with one
another in quiet, because some shall be afraid of them
and fear them as evil men. But these shall not even
believe the word of the law of the Most High, and others
gaping with their mouths shall not believe and shall
believe, and shall be contradicting and contrary, and
obstructing the spirit of truth. And others shall be
wise with the spirit of error and uttering their oimi
ic'ords as the sayings of the Most High and the Mighty,
and others shall be j personal of faith f (personales
fidci) : others capable and strong in the faith of the
Most High and hateful to him that is strange thereto."
The corrupt words perhaps ought to have the meaning
"weak in faith" : I do not see how to mend them,
unless personales is a too literal rendering of ^Lacfiwvovi'Tea-
(" = failing"), which seems not unlikely. As Rendcl
Harris remarks, this is like a passage in Baruch {Syriac
Apoc. xxxiii.) : " For not many wise shall be found at
that time, and they that understand shall be few, but
they that know shall for the most part keep silence.
36. "And many shall say to many at that time:
Where hath the multitude of understanding hidden itself,
and whither hath the multitude of wisdom removed ? "
{b) There is also a Baruch quotation in an old anti-
Jewish dialogue, the Altercation of Simon and Theophilus.
" How then did he, near the end of his book, prophesy
concerning His birth, and the habit of His raiment,
and His passion and resurrection, saying : This mine
anointed, my chosen, is called the offspring of {lit.
darted or thrown from : jaatlatns) an undefiled womb,
and was born and suffered?" The context of the
passage suggests to me that this citation was to be
THE OLD TESTAMENT 79
unck-rstood as coming from llie " doutcro-canonical "
Book of Baruch in our Apocrypha. It may have been
a Christian addition to the end of Chapter iii., where
words occur which arc regularly quoted as a prophecy
of the Incarnation.
(c) In Solomon of Basrah's Book of the Bee (ed.
E. A. W. Budge, 1886 : c. xxxvii. p. 81) we read, " The
Prophecv of Zaradosht concernini^ our Lord. This Zara-
dosht is Baruch the scribe." The prophecy is uttered
to the disciples of Zaradosht, the King Gushnasp
(Hystaspes) and Sasan and Mahmad. The Virgin-birth,
crucifixion, descent into hell, resurrection, ascension,
and second coming are predicted, and in answer to a
question of Gushnasp, Zaradosht says, " He shall
descend from my family. I am he and he is I ; he
is in me and I am in him," and more to the same
effect. I do not know any other source which identifies
Baruch with Zoroaster.
Of these passages I think the first, from Cyprian, is
the only one that can be counted as a possible fragment
of a lost book.
Ezra
With a word about Ezra, Esdras, we actually end
our treatment of the lists. The book which they name
is, we may be sure, that known as 4 Esdras, or 2 Esdras
of the Apocrypha, which, with Enoch, is the most
famous of all apocryphal Apocalypses, and need not
be described here. I should, however, just like to
put on record a caution against what I believe to be
a misapprehension about it.
In the opening words (iii. i) the supposed author
describes himself as " I Salathiel, who am also Esdras,"
and this has served critics as an argument in favour
of the thesis that the book is composed of a plurality
of documents welded together by a final editor, and
that one of these — the principal one — was an Apocalypse
of Salathiel. But I beheve I have found evidence to
show that there was a Jewish tradition which identified
Esdras with Salathiel independently of this book.
8o THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
Epiphanius {on the Twelve Gems) speaks of an " Esdras
the priest — not that Esdras who was called Salathicl,
whose father was Zorobabel, which Zorobabel was son
to Jechonias." Epiphanius — who is wrong, by the way,
in his genealogy — nowhere shows any knowledge of
4 Esdras. It is evident from what he says, and from
other sources, that the name Esdras was supposed to
have been that of several persons; one authority defi-
nitely states that Esdras the prophet, the author of
4 Esdras, and Esdras the scribe, the author of the
canonical Ezra, lived about loo years apart : also,
4 Esdras is dated, in its opening words, in the thirtieth
year of the ruin of the city (530 B.C.), whereas Ezra
the scribe belongs to the middle of the next century.
The equation of vSalathiel with Esdras is based, I
beheve, upon i Chron. iii. 17, where we read, " and
the sons of Jeconiah, Assir, Salathiel his son" : and
Assir, in despite of phonetic laws, was thought to be,
or was forcibly assimilated to, the name Ezra : Assir
and Salathiel being taken as two names for one man.
Further details may be read in two articles of mine
in the Journal of Theological Studies for 1917 and igi8.
The matter is of some little importance, because, if my
view is correct, it does away with the only formidable
argument in favour of the dissection of 4 Esdras into
a congeries of documents.
The first two and last two chapters of the Latin
version of 4 Esdras as they stand in our Apocrypha are
later accretions. Chapters i., ii. are an independent
Christian Apocalypse, surviving only in Latin. Chapters
XV., xvi. are prophecies of woes conceived in the spirit
of the Old Testament prophets and the Sibylline Oracles.
They nowhere contain the name of an author : a small
fragment has recently been found in Greek among the
Oxyrhynchus papyri ; otherwise they are preserved only
in Latin.
There are several later Apocalypses of Esdras. One
in Greek, edited from a single Paris MS. by Tischendorf
[Apocalypses Apocryphie) : one in Latin, printed by
Mercati' {Sludi e Testi 5, 1901), and also by Bratke in
Till-: OLD TESTAMENT 8i
a German prriodiral — I think the Thcol. JMtcratitr-
Zeitnng — from dilferent MSS. Both Greek and Latin
contain visions of the next world, and represent some
rather older document, but neither is specially interest-
ing. To them probably applies the condemnation by
Nicephorus Homologeta {cir. 850) of an Apocalypse of
Esdras. An Ethiopic Apocalypse (Brit. Mus., MSS.
/Eth. 27, Ci) has not been printed. One in Syriac
(ed. Baethgen, 1886, Zcitschrift fur Alttest. W issenschaft)
has passages about Islam, and must be late in its present
form. \\\ Issaverdens' translation of Armenian apo-
crypha are some Inquiries of Esdras concerning Souls — ■
a dialogue with an angel, imperfect at the end, of
Christian complexion. ,
There is also a series of prognostics — Kalandologia
and Broniologia — predicting the character of the year
from the day of the week on which it begins, or telling
of auspicious days, or what thvmder portends at various
times of year. More of these are ascribed to Esdras
(the " Erra Pater" of Hudibras) than to any one else,
but Shem, David and Ezekiel also occur as authors of
them. They are to be found in Greek and in several
Western vernaculars, and arc comparable to the dream-
book of Daniel and the magical and alchemical books
current under the names of Abel, Seth, Moses, Miriam,
Solomon.
As to a Christian passage supposed by Justin Martyr
to have been excised from the text of Ezra by the
Jews, see Rendel Harris's Testimonies, I.
We have now done with prophets, and revert to
kings.
Hezekiah
The Testament of Hezekiah is once mentioned, by
George Cedrenus, who says (p. 120, Paris) : " In the
Testament of Ezekias king of Judah, Esaias the prophet
says that Antichrist has power for three years and
seven months, which is 1290 days. And after Anti-
christ is cast into Tartarus the Lord of all things,
Christ our God, comes, and there is also a resurrection
82 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
and retribution for good and evil deeds." This occurs
in a collection of rather incoherent paragraphs, roughly
in chronological order, which deal with Old Testament
history, and are followed by a more connected narrative
going over the same ground. The quotation coincides
with a passage in the Ascension of Isaiah (iv. 12 ff.),
" and he shall bear sway three years and seven months
and twenty-seven days," etc. The number of days
(1334) disagrees with Cedrenus. In Asc. i. 2, 4 we have
an apparent reference to visions of Hezekiah, who
summons Manasseh " in order to deliver unto him the
words of righteousness which the King himself had
seen (in his sickness, i. 4, 13), and of the eternal
judgments and the torments of Gehenna," etc. Dr.
Charles and others have not unnaturally thought of
the Testament of Hezekiah as a writing, part of which
at least has been incorporated into the Ascension.
This part is supposed by Dr. Charles to comprise
Asc. iii. 13&. to iv. 18 — a prediction of Christ and
Antichrist. The data in Asc. i. imply that Hezekiah
had certain revelations about these matters in his
sickness in the fifteenth year of his reign. And the
" testamentary" part of the book would be, according
to analogy, his telHng these revelations, at the end of
his life, to his son Manasseh. Manasseh remains un-
affected by them, and Isaiah tells Hezekiah that
Manasseh will do evil and will put him, Isaiah, to death,
and that God will not allow Hezekiah to slay Manasseh
in order to prevent this crime. That is the substance
of Asc. i.
The writer of the Opus Imperfectiim on Matthew, m
his first homily, when treating of the genealogy of
Christ, and particularly of the name of Manasseh,
quotes something which does not exactly correspond
with our texts of the Ascension, but comes very near
them.
" When Ezechias had fallen sick at one time and
Esaias the prophet had come to visit him, Ezechias
called his son Manasses, and began to command him
that he ought to fear God, and how to rule his kingdom,
Till-: OLD TKSTAMRNT 83
and much else. And Esaias said to him : ' Verily, thy
words go not down into his heart ; but it must also
befall that I should be slain by his hand.' Ezechias,
hearing that, wished to slay his son, saying, ' It is
better for mc to die without a son than to leave such
a son, who should both provoke God, and persecute
the saints.' And Esaias the prophet hardly restrained
him, saying, ' God will make this thy counsel of none
effect,' seeing the piety of Ezechias, that he loved God
more than his own son." He then gives the story of
Manasseh's capti\'ity, sufferings, and deliverance, in
words which coincide with those of the Apostolic
Constitutions (ii. 22) and are pretty evidently taken
from them ; he omits the Prayer of Manasses which
is given there. (Very shortly afterwards he quotes the
story of King Amon, which is also in the Apostolic
Constitutions (ii. 23) : and elsewhere he uses that book.
So we need not doubt that the Constitutions (or Dida-
scalia) are his source for the latter part of his account
of Manasseh.) In the above passage about Hezekiah
and Isaiah it is to be noted [a) that the king's illness
is specially mentioned, and {b) that his words (" It is
better for me," etc.) do not occur in the Ascension.
Later on, in Horn. 33, he says that the Jewish people
" bore false witness, in the person of those who slew
the prophets, especially against Esaias, before King
Manasses, saying : He calls your princes men of Sodom
and the people of Israel men of Gomorrha : he blas-
phemes, saying that he has seen the Lord Sabaoth,
whereas God says : No man shall see my face and hve.
Wherefore also he was sawn with a wooden saw."
This passage from the Opus Imperfectum is not adduced,
I think, by any of the editors of the Ascension. It
is in substance Asc. iii. 8-10, v. i, the order of the
two accusations being reversed, and the text shortened
by the Homilist. So he knew a part of the Asc. which
does not, ex hypothesi, belong to the Testament (iii.
I3i-iv. 18). Indeed, we ought to credit him with
knowing the whole of Asc, for we have fragments of
a Latin version covering all the book, preserved in a
G
84 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
fifth or sixth century MS. of Arian origin : and our
HomDist was an Arian of the fifth century, who wrote
in Greek.
I am myself very much puzzled by this question of
what the Testament of Hezekiah was. There must have
been more of it, one is inclined to say, than Dr. Charles
assigns to it. Did it perchance go on to relate the
destinies of Manasseh, and was it the source of his
Prayer? I hardly think so. The Apostolical Con-
stitutions {Didascalia) are our earliest evidence for the
Prayer, and my reading of them suggests that they are
using an interpolated text of Chronicles. There is
nothing Christian in the Prayer, and the Testament as
quoted by Cedrenus is Christian. Or is " Testament of
Hezekiah " an alternative title for what we call the
Ascension of Isaiah ? It would be a strange one, and
it has left no other trace. Yet Cedrenus is not likely
to have invented it.
My acceptance of Dr. Charles' view is impeded by
the strong case with which Professor Burkitt (in his
Schweich Lectures on Apocalypses) has made out in
favour of the unity of the whole Ascension. He is
seconded by Mr. Vacher Burch {fournal Theol. Studies,
1918).^ He does allow, it is true, for the interpolation
• Mr. Burch's article seeks to show from a passage in Asc.
iv. 21, 22, that the Ascension is avowedly based upon the primi-
tive Christian book of Testimonies (which Dr. Rendel Harris
and he have investigated with such interesting results). The
words on which he bases his speculation are these (iv. 21) :
" and the descent of the Beloved imto Sheol, behold, it is written
in that section where the Lord saith, ' Behold, my son will
understand ' (Isa. lii. 13). And all these things, behold, they
are written in the parables of David," etc. (here follows an
enumeration of prophetical books). The " section " referred
to is, according to Mr. Burch, a section of the book of Testi-
monies. But surely the two verses which immediately precede
his quotation tend to show that it is a section of the canonical
Book of Isaiah which is being cited. They run thus: (19) "and
the rest of the words of the vision are written in the vision of
Babylon (Isa. xiii.). (20) And the rest of the vision regarding
the Lord, behold, it is written in the parables according to my
words which are written in the book which I publicly prophesied."
Mr. Burch takes no notice of these two verses, which I am afraid
TIII«: OLD TESTAMENT 85
of a passage in (■hai)tor xi. which is absent froni two of
the versions. He does not write on the question of the
Testament.
I beheve that with our present Hghts we cannot get
further than saying that there was a book known as
the Testament of Hezekiah, which contained revelations
made to the King in his sickness; that these were
Christian in character, and that the substance of a
gO(xl part of them and of the book as a whole is pre-
served in the first five chapters of the Ascension. But
whether it was incorporated into the Ascension or
developed out of it remains for me uncertain.
There is other mythical matter connected with
Hezekiah' s name. He is said to have burned the
medical and magical books of Solomon, and to have
obliterated the secrets, of cures, and the like, which
had been engraved on the Temple gates. Others relate
that these secrets were written on the wall of his
chamber, and that when he turned his face to the
wall (Isa. xxxviii. 2) it was to consult them. Cedrenus
is one of those who tells of the burning of the books,
and it is also he who, when treating of Hezekiah' s
reign, tells the story of the man, who gave all his
property away, relying on the promise that God would
repay him with increase : and of his disappointment
and subsequent conversion, which fell out on this wise.
He resolved to go to Jerusalem and inquire of God,
or rather arraign His justice for deceiving him. As he
went he met two men disputing about a stone they
had picked up, and appeased their quarrel by buying
it of them at the price of his only two remaining coins.
On arriving at Jerusalem he showed the stone to a
goldsmith, who, on seeing it, worshipped. It was a
gem that for three years had been missing from the
high priest's breastplate, and a great price would be
invalidate (in my opinion) his interesting theory. Nor can I
think him justified in eliminating Nero from Asc. iv. 2. He has
to push this date of the Ascension very far back, and to make
the Prayer of Joseph a pro-Christian book of yet earlier date.
See above.
86 THE LOST APOCRYPHA
given for it. Meanwhile an angel appeared to the high
priest and told him that that day the lost stone would
be brought to him by a man to whom he was to give
a great sum of money, and then smite him lightly on
the face and say to him, " Be not doubtful in thy
heart, and disbelieve not the Scripture that says, ' He
that hath pity on the poor lendeth unto the Lord.' "
So it was done. The man left all the wealth in the
Temple, and went home, to doubt no more.
This story has made its way into Christian books —
the Ethiopic romance of Clement (ed. Budge, Contend-
ings of the Apostles), where it is told of Clement's father;
and it may be read, rendered from Latin, in S. Gaselee's
Stories of the Christian East. Cedrenus tells it, as I
said, under Hezekiah's reign, ^ and along with the story
of Tobit. I infer that he took it from a Jewish
apocryphon — not impossibly that of Ezekiel, which its
parable-character would suit well enough.
1 In the Chronicle of Georguis Hamartohis (ed. de Muralt,
1859: Hi. p. 154) the story is also given: it is there placed
between the reigns of Joash and Amaziah.
QUOTATIONS
It now remains to collect certain anonymous quota-
tions, purporting to be Scriptural, which appear in the
works of early Christian writers. I can hardly hope
that I have not missed some such, but jirobably all
that are of first-class interest will be found here.
A word of caution is necessary. Whoever has read
Dr. Rendel Harris's Testimonies (Part I.) must recognize
that when we encounter passages seemingly conilated
out of texts from the Old Testament, there is a possi-
bility that we may be dealing with extracts from an
early Christian selection of lo<^ia or testimonies from the
])rophets, or with erratic renderings of texts that we
know in other forms, not with citations from lost
writers. I suspect that this is the case with a good
many of the passages I have here put together, though
their origin has not yet been tracked out.
The Apostolic Fathers come first.
Clement of Rome. Ep. ad. Cor. xxix. (after quoting
Deut. xxxii. 8) : " And in another place he says, ' Behold,
the Lord taketh to Himself a nation from the midst
of the nations, as a man taketh the firstfruits of his
threshing floor : and there shall come forth out of that
nation the holy of holies' (Neuter Plural)."
This is guessed by Gebhardt and Harnack to be a
conflation of passages in Deut. (iv. 34, vii. 6, xiv. 2),
Num. (xviii. 27), 2 Chron. (xxxi. 14), Ezek. (xlviii. 12),
but these do not contain the whole, by any means.
Rcsch would assign it to the apocryphal Ezekiel, along
with the prophecy quoted above under Eldad and Medad,
and with the next :
/. c. 1. 4 : " For it is written, ' Enter ye into the
87
88 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
store-chambers for a little moment, until my anger and
wrath be overpast : and I will remember the good day
and will raise you up out of your coffins.' "
Here the first clause is found in Isa. xxvi. 20, and
the last', perhaps, in Ezek. xxxvii. 12, but there is not
exact agreement with either.
In xvii. 5 the words, " But I am the vapour from a
pot," are attributed to Moses. Dr. Rendel Harris has
pointed out that the real source is i Chron. xxix. 15.
xxvi. 2 : " He saith in a certain place, ' And Thou
shalt raise me up and I will give thanks unto Thee,'
and ' I laid me down and slept and rose up, for Thou
art with me.' "
The first quotation is not exactly to be found in the
Psalms, but the second is combined from Ps. iii. (iv.) 6
and xxiii. 4; I imagine Clement is quoting inexactly
from memory. He would be less likely to verify
quotations from the Psalms than from any other book.
xlvi. 2 : " For it is written : Cleave unto the holy,
for they that cleave to them shall be made holy."
Ps. xviii. 26 follows.
" Clca\-ing to the holy" is a phrase twice used by
Hernias, and Clement of Alexandria quotes Ps. xviii. 26
and then our passage, probably using the Epistle, which
he knew well. The words, " for if thou cleave to the
holy thou shalt become holy," are also in an early
tract of canons to which Hilgenfeld gave the name of
the Two Ways, or Judgment of Peter.
In " 2 Clement" xiii. 3 is a passage not marked as
a quotation, but reading hke one : " But ye know that
already the day of judgment cometh burning like a
furnace, and certain of the heavens shall melt, and all
the earth, melting like lead upon the fire; and then
shall the secret and the manifest works of men appear."
The Apocalypse of Peter is a likely source here; there
is a distinct resemblance to 2 Peter iii. 10.
Barnabas vi. 13 : " The Lord says : ' Behold, I make
the latter things as the first.' " To this end, therefore,
the prophet proclaimed : " Enter ye into a land flowing
with milk and honey, and have dominion over it."
THE OLD TESTAMENT 89
Though inexact, ncitlici" clause goes far away from
what may be found in the Jjible.
vii. 4 : " What saith He in (by) the proi)liet ? ' And
let them eat of the goat that is offered at the fast for
all the sins.' Give good heed. ' And let the priests
alone all cat the intestine unwashed, with vinegar. . . '"
7 : (after quoting Lev. xvi. 7 sq. : " Take two goats," etc.).
But what arc they to do with the other ? " Cursed,
saith he, is the other." See how the type of Jesus is
manifested : " And spit, all of you, upon it, and pierce
it, and put the scarlet wool about its head, and so let
it be cast into the wilderness."
We can hardly be wrong in reckoning this as a
Christian interpolation into Leviticus, comparable to,
but more serious than, that in the Psalm, " The Lord
reigneth fro)n the Tree," which runs through all the
early centuries.
xi. 9 : " And again another prophet saith : And the
land of Jacob was praised above all the earth. ... 10.
Then what saith He ? " " And there was a river flowing
from the right, and there came up out of it goodly
trees, and whosoever cateth of them shall live for ever."
Apparently the two clauses are from a single source,
which reminds one of Ezek. xlviH 1-12, but is not the
same.
xii. I : " Likewise again he defineth concerning the
Cross in another prophet who saith : ' And when shall
these things be accomplished ? The Lord saith : When
a tree (or timber) and wood shall lie down and arise,
and when blood shall drop from a tree (or wood).' "
It has been thought that this is from 4 Esdras iv. 53,
but of late opinion has been against that view, and,
I think, rightly. Discussions of it may be found in
Rendel Harris's Rest of the Words of Baruch and in my
Introduction to 4 Esdras.
xvii. 6 : " For it is written : And it shall be, when
the week is being accomphshed, that the Temple of
God shall be built gloriously in the name of the Lord."
This is hke Dan. ix. 24 ff. Resch would attribute it
to the apocryphal Ezekiel.
90 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
Clement of Alexandria, whom we have found to be
a rich source, is our next hunting-ground.
Protrepticus viii. fm. : " Hear again the prophet who
says : The sun shall fail and the heaven shall be
darkened, but the Almighty shall stand for ever : and
the powers of the heaven shall be shaken, and the
heavens shall be rolled up like a curtain, stretched out
and pulled in (for these are the words of the prophecy),
and the earth shall flee from the face of the Lord."
Many Biblical phrases are here, but the ensemble is
not Biblical, and an Apocalypse of an Old Testament
character does seem likely to be the source.
Protr. X. 98 : "A certain prophecy says that things
here (on earth) will be in an ill plight when they (men)
put their faith in statues."
Peedagogits HL viii. 44. The expression " intelligent
fire" {^povifxov TTvp) is used. God " poured out a little
of that intelligent fire" upon Sodom. It is a phrase
which recurs in Clement and other writers, and which
I believe we owe to some apocryphal book. It means
a fire which distinguishes between the good and the bad.
The Pistis Sophia c. 115 speaks of " a very great,
very vehement, wise fire which will burn up sins."
Clem. Alex., Eclogac ex propheticis scripinris, 26 :
" The fire is conceived of as a good power and mighty,
destroying the worse and preserving the better, for
which reason this fire is called in the prophets intelligent."
Cf. also 27.
Strom, vii. 34. 4 : " We say that the fire sanctifies
not the flesh but the sinful souls; ice do not mean the
all-devouring ordinary fire, but the intelligent, that
penetrates the soul that passes through the fire."
Origen {on Prayer, 29) : " Rather the retribution of
their error takes place in them when they are delivered
to sufferings of dishonour or cleansed by the intelligent
fire, and in prison have the payment for every one of
their shortcomings exacted from them to the uttermost
farthing."
Origsn {on Ezekiel, i. 3) : " What, O Apostle, is that
fire which tries our works? What is that fire so wise
THE OLD TESTAMENT 91
that it keeps my gold . . . and only consumes the e\'il
I have done ? "
Minucius Felix, Odaviiis, (viii.) 35. 3 : " There a wise
iwv burns the members and refreshes them, consumes
and nourishes."
1 csluiiu-ni of Isaac (Coptic, p. 41, Guidi) : " The river
of fire did not hurt the righteous, but the sinners, since
the fire was knowing them."
Id. Arabic (Barnes, ap. Test, of Abraham, p. 147) :
" And the river (of fire) had intelligence in the fire
thereof, that it should not hurt the righteous, but the
sinners only, biu"ning them." The Test, of Jacob (ibid.) :
" The river of fire which is prepared to separate the
transgressors from the polluted ( ?)."
The Apocalypse of Peter had the conception of a river
of fire which at the last day all souls were to pass, and
which should spare the righteous and burn the sinners.
But I am inclined to think that it must have appeared
in a Jewish apocalypse before that, with the definite
description " intelligent fire."
Pxd. III. xii. 89: "Good works," saith he, "are a
prayer acceptable to the Lord." Cf. Prov. xv. 8. It
is not unlike the quotation from the Apocalypse of Adam
in Barnabas (p. i). Here also it occurs in conjunction
with passages from Isa. i.
Stromaleis, II. vi. 28, 29. xAfter quoting Isa. liv. i,
he continues with words which are not in our texts of
the Hebrew or LXX : " Thou livedst in the enclosure
of the people, thy children were blessed in the taber-
nacles of the fathers. ..." And he adds more plainly :
" Thou didst inherit the covenant of Israel." This
hardly ranks as apocryphal.
Str. III. xviii. 106 : " Makers of war, strikers with
their tails, according to the prophet."
Str. MI. xii. 74 : " The voice that says : ' Whomso-
ever I smite, do thou pity. ' "
Excerpt, ex Theodoto, 10. In this and other sections
there is mention of the first-created angels (seven in
number, as we learn from Hermas and from the
Stromateis). They are higher than the archangels (12,
92 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
27). The word used is TrpwroKTio-Tot : the idea occurs
in Jewish writings, e. g. the Pirke R. Eliezer 4, where
it is said that before God is spread a veil, and the seven
first-created angels serve Him before the veil. This
veil is spoken of in the Exc. ex Theodot. 38, and there
is something like it in the Testament of Isaac.
See also Clement's Eclogx ex propheticis scripturis 51,
52, 57, Adunibr. in i J oh.
Irenaeus, Apostolical Preaching c. 43, after quoting
" Jeremiah" : " Before the morning star I begat thee
(Ps. ex.), and before the sun is his name (Ps. Ixxii. 17)."
And again he says : " Blessed is he who was there
before the coming of man into being." Lactantius,
Div. Inst. iv. 8, quotes as from Jeremiah : " Blessed is
he who was, before he was born." On these passages
see Rendel Harris's Testimonies, I. 72, and Dean Robin-
son's forthcoming edition of the Apostolical Preaching.
Hippolytus (on Antichrist, 15) : " And another prophet
also saith : He shall gather together all his power from
the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof :
whom he hath called and whom he hath not called
shall go with him : he shall make the "sea white with
the sails of his ships and the land (plain) black with
the shields and the weapons : and every one that shall
meet him in battle shall fall by the sword."
Hilgenfeld thought this was from the Apocalypse of
Peter, but we may now be sure that that book said
very little, probably nothing, about Antichrist ; and
the words have all the flavour of an Old Testament
prophecy. My own attribution would be to the
Apocalypse of Elias.
Tertullian {on the Resurrection of the Flesh, 32) : " But
that there may not appear to be a resurrection only
of these bodies which are committed to graves, thou
hast it written : ' And I will command the fishes of the
sea, and they shall vomit up the bones that are devoured,
and I will make joint come to joint and bone to bone.' "
The last words are like those of Ezek. xxxviii. 7, and
the whole passage agrees in substance with Enoch Ixi. 5,
but not in wording. Tertullian does not very often
Till'. OIJ) TJiSTAMKNT 93
qiiok- apocrypha," Imt the pseiido-EzckicI, wc have
sci-n, is kiKiwii to him: this may hi" from it.
Hystaspes
A book of a somewhat different kind from those we
have been considering has to be noticed now. It is
the Prophecy of Hysiasfcs, a soi-disanl pagan prophetical
book of the same general character as the Sibylline
Oracles (of which, it is hardly necessary to say, a large
corpus, wholly Jewish or Christian, exists).
The su})poscd author, Hystaspes, Hydaspes, Guslitasp,
is described as an ancient Persian king, contemporary
with Zoroaster. Agathias (ii. 24) says that Zoroaster
was " in the time of Hystaspes," but that it was
uncertain to him whether this was the father of Darius
or some other Hystaspes. He speaks on the authority
of the Persians of his own time (middle of the sixth
century). In ])assing, I remind the reader that a
Christian ]ini})hecy of Zoroaster, mentioned above under
Baruch, is addressed to his disciple Gushnasp. Of
Hystaspes, Ammianus Marccllinus (xxiii. 6, 32) has this
to say : " Hystaspes, a most wise King, father of
Darius. He, while boldly exploring the hidden parts
of I'pper India, came upon a lonely foi"est region whose
still quietude was peopled by the wisest of the Brachmani:
from them he learnt, so far as he was able, the system
of the course of the world and the stars, and the ritual
of a fire-worshi]-) ; and some part of his learning he
infused into the minds of the Magi, by whom, along
with the lore of predicting the future, it is handed
down to later ages through the descendants of each."
This passage docs not show Hystaspes as the author
of a written work ; our evidence as to that is all derived
from Christian sources. There are four passages.
Clement of Alexandria, Str. vi. 5. 42, 43 : " In
addition to the Preaching of Peter this will be seen from
* He is generally known to have used Enoch ; and Mr. H. N.
Bate has recently called my attention to a passage in his de
bono patienti,r, xiii., in which he not only alludes to the Ascension
of Isaiah, but also, undoubtedly, to the Testament of Job, chap. xx.
94 THE LOST APOCRYPHA OF
the words of the Apostle Paul, who says : Take also
the Greek books, consider the Sibyl, how she declares
the One God and the future. Take Hystaspes and
read him, and you will find the Son of God written
of far more distinctly and clearly, and how that many
Kings will array themselves against the Christ, hating
him and those who bear his name, and his faithful
ones, and his patience, and his appearing."
I agree with others who see in this a probable quota-
tion from the ancient Acts of Paul. If it represents
Hystaspes at all faithfully, we have no choice but to
set down the book as Christian.
Justin Martyr, Apology, i. 20 : " And the Sibyl too,
and Hystaspes, said that there should be a dissolution
of corruptible things by means of fire."
Id. 44 : " (By the evil one's contrivance) death was
decreed against those who read the books of Hystaspes
or the Sibyl or the Prophets." The reason for this
decree will appear from the next passage.
Lactantius, Divine Institutes, vii. ig. ig : " Hystaspes
also, who was a most ancient king of the Mcdes, from
whom the river took its name which is now called the
Hydaspes, left on record for posterity a wonderful
dream interpreted by a prophesying boy {sub inter-
pretatione uaticinantis piicri). He foretold that the
empire and name of Rome should be taken away out
of the world, and that, long before that race of Trojan
descent began to be."
This tells us something of the form of the book.
The king, I conjecture, had a symbolic vision, and a
marvellous child interpreted it to him, in the manner
of Daniel. Is it a faint late echo of this that we find
in mediaeval times in the following story ? Each of the
Three Kings had a sign in his house before the birth
of Christ. In one case an ostrich laid two eggs, out
of which were hatched a lion and a lamb ; in the
second, a balsam plant in the garden produced a flower,
out of which came a dove, and it announced that God,
the Maker of heaven, earth, and sea, the Saviour of all,
was born of a virgin ; to the third King it befell that
Till-: OLD TESTAMKNT 95
his wife liare a son, who stood up on his feet and
})roi)hc'sic'd uf Christ and foretold his own death after
thirty-three days. The tale, which comes to us in
Latin, is said in the MSS. to be drawn from a Greek
writer, Germanus ( ? the Patriarch of Constantinople).
The Latin will be found in 0. Schade's Narrationes de
vita ct conversatione B. Mariir, etc. (Konigsberg, 1876),
from a Giessen MS. I have also found it in MS.
CCCC. 365 and in Cosin's Library at Durham (V. iv. 9).
I believe representations of it are among the sculptures
on the Cathedral of Ulm.
The last passage I know about Hystaspes is in what
is known as the Tiihmgen Theosophy (Buresch. Klaros,
p. 95). It is an epitome, contained in a MS. at Tiibingen
(a transcript of the burnt Strasburg MS. that contained
the Lpislle to Diognetus and other apologetic writings),
of a fifth-century treatise in eleven parts, of which
Books L to VIL dealt with the True Faith, and VIIL
to XL were called Theosophy. " In the fourth (of the
Theosophy) or eleventh (of the whole work) he pro-
duces oracles of Hystaspes, who was a most pious King,
he says, of the Persians or Chaldeans, and therefore
received a revelation of divine mysteries concerning the
incarnation of the Saviour." He thus confirms, what
the Clement-quotation suggested, that the book of
Hystaspes was of Christian complexion.
APPENDIX
Ladder of Jacob
By way of appendix to the fragments of lost books
I should like to add one or two notices of apocrypha
which do not quite fit into the framework of the main
part of the book.
The first of these is the Ladder of Jacob, which exists
in two recensions in Slavonic, and was translated by
Bonwetsch in the Gottingen Nachrichten, 1900 (p. 76).
I depend upon his text for my rendering.
The first recension, contained in a single MS., rather
mutilated, of 1494, in the Rumjangov Museum at
Moscow, gives the most original text. The other has
been printed by various Russian scholars and, like
other apocrypha, is found in the text of the Pala^a,
or Old Testament History.
(Rec. 2) : Now Jacob went to his Uncle Laban, and
he found a place and fell asleep there, laying his head
on a stone, for the sun was set : and there he saw a
vision.
(Rec. I begins) : And lo ! a ladder was set up on the
earth, whose top reached unto heaven. And the top
of the ladder was a face as of a man, hewn out of fire.
Now it had twelve steps up to the top of the ladder,
and upon each step up to the top were two human faces
on the right and on the left — twenty-four faces seen
to their breast, on the ladder. But the middle face
was higher than them all, which I saw made of fire,
to the shoulder and the arm, very terribly, more than
the twenty-four faces. And as I looked, behold, the
Angels of God ascending and descending thereon :
but the Lord was set above it, and he called me, saying :
Jacob, Jacob. And I said : Here am I, Lord ; And he
g6
APPKNDIX 97
said to mc : The land whcrcun thou slcepest T will give
to thee and to thy seed after thee : and 1 will multiply
thy seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand of the
sea ; through thy seed shall all the earth be blessed,
and they that dwell thereon, unto the last times, the
years of the end. My blessing wherewith I have blessed
thee shall pour out from thee unto the last generation.
All in the east and the west shall be full of thy seed.
2. And when 1 heard it from above, fear and trembling
fell upon me, and 1 rose up from my dream. And while
the \'oiee of (kxl was yet in mine ears, I said : How
dreadful is this place ! this is none other but the house
of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And I set up
the stone that was under my head for a pillar, and
poured oil on the top of it, and I called the name of
that place the house of God (a line gone : Rec. 2 suggests
the supplement : And I prayed to God and said) : Lord
God of Adam, of thy (creature?), and Lord God of
Abraham and Isaac my father, and of all whose ways
are right before thee, thou that sittest mighty upon
the Cherubim and ui)on the throne of the majesty,
of i\vv and full of eyes, as I saw in my dream ; that holds
the Cherubim with four faces, that bears the Seraphim
full of eyes, that bears the w'hole world under his arm,
and is borne of none. Thou hast established the heaven
for the glory f)f thy name. Thou hast spread out upon
the clouds of the heaven the heaven that fiieth (resteth ?)
under thee, that under it thou mayest move the sun
and hide it in the night lest it be held for God : thou
hast ordained the way for the moon and the stars, and
her thou makest to wax and wane, but for the stars,
thou hast commanded them to pass over, lest these
also should be supposed gods. Before the face of thy
majesty the six-winged Seraphim fear, and hide their
feet and their face with their wings, and with the others
they fly, and sing {hco lines gone : no help from Rec. 2,
Xi'hich omits all this invocation) Highest, with twelve
faces, many-named, fiery, lightning-formed, holy one !
Holy, Holy, Holy, Jao Jaova, Jaoel, Sabakdos, Chabod,
Sabaoth, Omlelech, Elaber, Ame(?) S'me Barech,
98 APPENDIX
eternal king, strong, mighty, very great, long-suffering.
Blessed One, that fillest heaven and earth and the sea
and the abyss and all sons with thy glory. Hear
my song wherewith I have praised thee, and grant me
my petition for which I pray to thee, and show me the
interpretation of my dream. For thou art strong and
mighty and glorious, a holy God, the Lord of me and
of my fathers. {This rather resembles the prayer in the
Apocalypse of Abraham, of which a translation is pub-
lished in this series.)
3. And while I yet spake my prayer, there appeared
a voice (!) before my face saying : Sarekl, prince of
them that rejoice {or of the servants), thou that art
over visions, go make Jacob to understand the inter-
pretation of the dream which he saw, and show him
all things whatsoever he saw : but first bless him. And
the archangel Sarekl came to me, and I saw : it was a
face {a line gone) terrible. But I did not fear before
his look, for the face which I had seen in my dream . . .
was more than this, and I feared not the face of an
angel. And the angel said to me : What is thy name ?
and I said : Jacob. But I {read he said to me) Thy
name shall not henceforth be called Jacob, but thy
name shall be like my name, Israel. And when I came
from Fandana (cf. Apocalypse of Abraham, 2) in Syria
to meet my brother Esau, he came to me and blessed
me, and called my name Israel, and told me not his
name until I adjured him, and then he told me : Because
thou wast . . . [There is confusion here, it seems,
between the two incidents of the ladder and the wrestling.
I have wondered whether a dim reflection of the ' Prayer
of foseph ' is to be traced in this paragraph, but the text
is evidently in a had state. Rec. 2 has merely the statement
that an angel came and said he ivas sent to interpret the
vision.']
4. But this said he to me : The ladder which thou
sawest, which had twelve steps having two human faces
which changed their appearance — now this ladder is
this age, and the twelve steps are the times of
this age, and the twenty-four faces are the kings of
APPENDIX 99
the lawless hcallu'ii of this age. Under these kings
will be tried (line i^one : Jur. 2 thy children's children
and the line) of thy sons : they will rise up against the
lawlessness of thy descendants and will lay this place
waste through four descents (because ?) of the sins of
thy descendants, and of the substance of the forefathers
will be built this i)alace in the temple of the name of
thy God and thy fathers (? the palace of the temple
in the name of "the God of thy fathers); but through
the wrath of thy descendants will it be desolate until
{Rcc. 2 in) the fourth descent of this age : for thou didst
see four visions [or faces).
5. The first that stumbleth upon the steps . . . angels
ascending and descending and faces in the midst of the
steps : the Most High will raise up an heir of the
descendants of thy brother Eaau, and all the lords of
the nations of the earth will accept it, who have done
evil against thy seed, and will be given into his hand,
and he will be hardly borne by them. But he beginneth
to rule them with violence and to reign over them,
and the}' cannot resist him, until the day when his
decree goeth forth against them to serve the idols {line
gone) and to all them that appear in such a cause, and
so many ... of thy race, so many to Thalkonagargael.
(Rec. 2: The first that stumbleth upon the steps
will be a king of thy neighbours and will do evil against
thy seed ; he will be unwillingly borne by them. But
then beginneth he to rule over them, and with violence
to reign over them, and they cannot resist him, and his
decree groweth against them that they should worship
idols and sacrifice to the dead {l/ie deified Emperor) :
and he speaketh to use force to all that are in his kingdom,
which appear in such an accusation, so many to the
Most High out of thy race, and so many to Thalkona-
gargael.]
6 (Rec. i) : And know thou, Jacob, that thy seed
shall be strangers in a strange land, and men will ill-
treat them with bondage and lay blows on them daily :
but the people whom they serve will the Lord judge.
\\Tien a king ariseth and fighteth, then will there be to
100 APPENDIX
that place {al. when the Most High giveth his judgment
to that place, he will lead forth) then will thy seed,
even Israel, go forth out of the bondage of the heathen
who ruled over them with violence, and will be set free
from all reproach of their enemies. For this king is
the head of every revenge and retribution of them that
make attacks on thee, Israel. And the (at the?) end
of the age {sic). For the miserable will rise and cry,
and the Lord heareth them, and will be softened, and
the mighty letteth himself pity their sufferings, because
the angels and archangels pour out their prayers for
the saving of thy race. Then will their women bear
much fruit, and then will the Lord fight for thy race.
Here the oldest MS. ends.
Rec. 2 : And know thou, Jacob, etc. to will the Lord
judge. For the Most High will let himself pity, etc. to the
saving of thy race, that the Most High may have com-
passion; then will their women bear much fruit, and
then fighteth the Lord for thy race with terrible and
great signs, for the bondage inflicted on them. Their
full storehouses will be found empty of wine and of
every fruit : their land will boil over with creeping
things and every deadly thing. Earthquakes and much
destruction will there be. Then will the Most High
accomplish his judgment on that place, and will lead
forth thy seed out of the bondage of the heathen which
rule over them with violence, and they will be saved from
the reproaches of their enemies. But the head of the
king will be for (an object of) revenge : bitterly standeth
he up against them, but they cry, and the Lord heareth
them and poureth out his wrath upon the Leviathan
the sea serpent, and smiteth the lawless Thalkon with
the sword : for against the God of gods raiseth he up
his pride. But then, Jacob, appeareth thy righteousness
and that of thy fathers, and of them that shall be after
thee, walking in thy righteousness : and then shall
thy seed blow with the trumpet, and the whole kingdom
of Edom shall perish, with all the kings and peoples
of the Moabites.
Of these sections No. 4 seems to relate to the Temple
APPENDIX loi
and the Exile, No. 5 more clearly to the Romans, No. 0
certainly to Egypt- ^Vhat follows is Christian and is
only in Rec. 2.
7. But whereas thou sawest angels descending and
ascending upon the ladder, in the last times there will
be a man from the Most High, and he shall desire to
join the uj)per with the lower. Of him before his
coming shall your sons and your daughters prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions of him. For there
shall be such signs as these at the time of his coming :
a tree felled by the axe shall drop blood (cf. Barnabas
xii. I. above) ; boys of three months old shall speak
rationally {Sibylline Oracles, Testament of the Lord, 4
Esdras) ; a child in its mother's womb shall proclaim his
way (cf. Luke i.) ; a young man shall be as an old man.
And then cometh the expected one, whose path will
be perceived by no man. Then will the earth rejoice,
because it hath received the glory of heaven. That
which was above shall be below. And of thy seed
shall grow up a royal root {or the root of a king) ; and
he (it) shall increase and destroy the power of the Evil
one, but he himself shall be a saviour of the heathen, and
the rest of them that are weary, and a cloud which
shadeth the whole world from the heat (Isa. xxxii. 2),
for otherwise that which is disordered could not be
put in order, if he came not : otherwise that which is
below could not be joined to that which is above.
8. Now at his coming will images of brass {al. calves
of brass) and stone and all graven things utter their
voice for three days long. And they announce to
the wise men and let them know what will befall {or
is befalling) on earth, and by the star will they know
the way to him, when they see him upon earth whom
the angels see not above. Then will the Almighty be
found in a body on the earth, and encompassed by
the arms of a mortal, and he reneweth the state of
man and quickeneth (Adam and) Eve that died through
the fruit of the tree. Then will the deceit of the godless
one be overcome, and all idols fall on their faces, for
they will be put to shame by one who i§ adorned with
102 APPENDIX
honour, because they made lying inventions. Thence-
forth will they not have power to rule or to give pro-
phecies, for their honour will be taken from them, and
they will remain without glory. For he (the child) that
is come taketh the power and might from them and
recompenseth to Abraham the truth (righteousness)
which he promised him. Then he {or For this child)
roundeth off all that is sharp, and every rough thing
maketh he smooth, and he casteth all unrighteousness
into the depths of the sea : and he doeth wonders in
heaven and on the earth. And he will be wounded
in the midst of the house of the beloved {or the beloved
house : evidently " the house of his friends," Zechariah
xiii. 6). But when he is wounded, then also the saving
and the end of all corruption draweth near. For they
that have wounded him shall themselves receive a
wound which shall not be healed for them for ever.
But the wounded one shall all creatures worship, and
upon him shall many hope, and everywhere, and among
all the Gentiles, shall he be known. But they that
have known his name shall not be put to shame. And
his own might and his years shall not fail for ever.
The beginning of this section contains an undoubted
reference to a document of uncertain date — the Wonders
in Persia or The Dispute at the Court of the Sassanidoe,
of which the sage Aphroditianus is the hero. In it
the story is told at great length of the miracles, of
speaking idols in particular, which happened in Persia
at the time of our Lord's birth. This story may be
a good deal older than the document in which it is
imbedded. The whole text is best edited by Bratke in
Texte und Unterstichtmgen (1899) : also by Wirth, Ans
Orienialischen Chroniken .
I will note, in order to dismiss it, a passage of Epi-
phanius {Hi^r. xxx. 16), which has been supposed to
refer to the Ladder of Jacob. Epiphanius says that
the Ebionites made use of a book called the Ascents
of Jacobus {dva/3a9fxoL 'laKM(3ov) which represented him
as inveighing against the Temple and its sacrifices.
Nothing can be more obvious than that this refers to
Al'lM'.XDIX 103
Jamos the l^rnilur of the Lord and not to Jacob : Lif<lit-
foot {Gahtiuns, 2y(.), 330, 367 etc.) was, I doubt not,
li.^ht in tlie main in his view tliat we liave some rchcs
of the book in the Clcmontiut' Rccof;niiions (Book I.) and
(perhaps) in the tale of Hegesi})pus about James's death.
The Lost Tribes
The first document that tells us anything of the legend
that the ten (or nine and a lialf) tribes were dwelling
together as a conununity in a remote and unknown
land is the passage in 4 Iisdras xiii. 39 ,sy/. The con-
ception is also found in the Apocalypse of Baruch, Ixxvii.,
Ixxviii. It need not be traced out in full here ; but
the subject is relevant to the present work, inasmuch
as there evidently was a writing (presumably Jewish)
which described the conditions under which the lost
tribes lived.
We find vestiges of it in various places. First come
two passages of the Christian poet Commodian, who,
whether he lived in the late third century, as was
commonly thought, or later, was acquainted with a
good many interesting apocryphal writings.
The first section of the second book of his Inslntctions
is entitled, " Of the hidden holy people of Almighty
Christ the living God." To translate his terrible Latin
literally is beyond me, but something like the sense can
be given. The first book of the Instructions ends by
telling how Antichrist comes and performs wonders.
The Jews, searching the Scriptures, cry aloud to the
Most High that they have been deceived by Antichrist.
Book IL begins : " The last holy hidden people, of whom
we know not where they dwell, are desired." It then
speaks, very obscurely, of the two and a half tribes
who are separated from the nine and a half, and returns
to its proper subject in fine 21 : " But then the things
told in the law hasten to be fulfilled : Almighty Christ
comes down to His elect, who have been hidden from
us so long and grown to so many thousands. That
is the true heavenly people. The son dies not before
104 APPENDIX
his father there, nor do they experience pains or sores
growing in their bodies. They die in ripe age, resting
in their beds, fulfilHng the whole law, and therefore
are they kept safe. They are (now) bidden to come
over to the Lord from that region, and He dries up the
river for them as He did before, when they passed over.
Nor less does the Lord Himself come forth with them.
He passes to om" lands, they come with their heavenly
King, and on their journey how shall I tell what God
accomplishes for them ? Mountains sink down before
them, and springs brealv forth. All creation rejoices
to see the heavenly people. And they hasten to rescue
their captured mother."
In the Carmen Apologcticum the same story is told.
The Jews cry for help to God (11. 934, 941) : " Then
Almighty God, to fulfil all that I have spoken of, will
bring forth a people hidden for a long time. They are
the Jews who were cut off by the river beyond Persia,
whom God willed to remain there until the end. The
captivity caused them to be in that place : of twelve
tribes, nine and a half dwell there. There is no lying
nor any hatred : therefore no son dies before his parents :
nor do they bewail their dead nor mourn for them after
our manner, for they look for a resurrection to come.
They eat no living thing among their food, but only
herbs, for these are without shedding of blood. Full
of righteousness, they live with unblemished bodies.
The stars {genesis : perhaps lust is meant) excite no
evil influence on them, no fever kindles them, nor fierce
cold, because they purely obey all the law ; to this we
too should attain if we lived rightly; only death and
toil are there, all else is without force."
" This people then, which now is laid up far away,
will return to the land of Judah, the river being dried
up. And with them God will come to fulfil the promises.
All through the journey they exalt in the presence
of God : everything grows green before them, all things
are glad; the creature itself rejoices to receive the holy
ones. Everywhere springs break out of their own accord
where the people of the ]VIo§t High pass with the terrpr
APPENDIX 105
of hcuxfii. The clouds uuikc a sliatlow for lliLin that
thoy be not vexed by the sun, and lest they grow weary
the very mountains lay themselves flat." He goes on
to describe tlieir irresistible might and rai)id conquest
of the imjiious Antichrist.
The ICthiopic Acis of Si. Maltliciv (tr. Budge, Con-
icmiiniis of I he Apostles, ii. 112) tell how Peter and Andrew
met Matthew, and he told them that he had lately
been in the land called Prokumenos, which being inter-
preted is " Those who rejoice," and had found the
people Christian : in fact the Lord Himself constantly
visited them. He asked them how this came about.
Their answer was, " Hast thou not heard the story
concerning the nine tribes and the half tribe whom
God Almighty brought into the land of inheritance?
We are they. ... As for gold and silver, we desire
it not in our country : we eat not flesh and we drink
not wine in our country, for our food is honey and our
drink is the dew. We do not look upon the face cf
woman with sinful desire : our firstborn children we
offer as a gift to God, that they may minister in . . .
the sanctuary . . . until they be thirty years of age.
The water we drink fioweth not from cisterns hewn
by the hand of man but . . . floweth from Paradise.
Our raiment is of the leaves of trees. No word of lying
hear we in our land, and no man knoweth another who
speaketh that which is false. No man taketh to wife
two women in our land, and the son dieth not before
his father, and the young man speaketh not in the
presence of the aged. The lions dwell with us, but they
do no harm to us nor we to them. When the winds
rise we smell the scent of Paradise, and in our country
there is neither spring nor cold nor ice, but there are
winds, and they are always pleasant."
That Commodian and the Acts of Matthew draw
ultimately from a common source seems clear. That
it was apocalyptic and Jewish is a safe conjecture :
but further than that I do not feel warranted in going.
An elaboration of the theme of the Utopian community
may be read in the Narrative of Zosimas, a hermit \\ ho
io6 APPENDIX
visited the secluded land and found it inhabited by the
descendants of the Rechabites. He had to leave them
because he suggested to his host that he should make
an untruthful excuse. The text will be found in my
Apocrypha Anecdota, I., and a translation in Recently
discovered MSS. {Ante-Nicene Christian Library).
Other Legends
There are, of course, many other legends woven about
the Old Testament history which may have been the
themes of apocryphal books. Such, for instance, is
the Story of the Captivity, which is current in Arabic.
Two versions of it are accessible, one in the Revue de
r Orient Chretien for 1910-11, the other in Amelineau's
Contes de I'Egypte Chretienne, II. It is a picturesque
embroidery of the Bible story, of which Jeremiah is
the hero, and it shows a knowledge of the Paralipomena
of that prophet. Another is the Slavonic tale of
Babylon, translated by Wesselovsky in the Archiv fiir
Slavische Philologie, 11. Neither could possibly be at
all early in date, I think; the second might fairly be
called a folk-tale. There arc, besides, lives of Biblical
heroes such as Joseph, David, and Job, in Arabic and
other Eastern tongues, which have not as yet been
looked into, and which may prove to contain old elements.
But to stray much further than I have done into late
workings-up of earlier matter would be inappropriate.
I hope and believe that in the present collection not much
that is of really old date will be found to have been
passed over.
INDEX
Abdias, Histoyia Apostolica, 63
Abraham, Apocalypse, 16 f.,
08; Testament, 16 f.
Adam, Apocalypse, Life, Peni-
tence, Testament, 1 11.
Agathias, c)3
Ambrosiaster, 31
Ammianus Marcellinus, 93
Anastasius of Sinai, xii, 7
Anglo-Saxon fragment of
Jannes and Jambres, 32 ;
Salomon and Saturn, 41, 51
Antichrist, description of, 57
ff . ; prophecy of, 81, 92
Antony, St., Life of, 67
Aphroditianus, 102
Apocalypse; see Abraham,
Adam, Baruch, Daniel,
Elijah, Esdras, Moses, Paul,
Peter, Zechariah, Zephaniah.
Apocrypha, production ol, x;
modern, xi
Apollonius of Tyana, 2
Apostolic Constitutions, 16, 54,
83 f.
Apuleius, 33
Arendzen, 58
Ark, Noah"s, Legends of, 13 11.
Armenian Lists of Apocrypha,
xiii f. ; Gospel of Infancy, 10
Artapanus, 32
Ascension of Isaiah. Sec
Isaiah.
Ascents of James, 102
Asenath, Book of, xiv, 25 f.
Assumption of Moses. See
.- Moses.
Athanasius-Ps., Synopsis, xi f . ;
Story of Melchizedek, 18
Aiixerre Cathedral, 11
10'
Babylon, Tale of, 106
Barbelo, 13
Barnabas, Epistle of; quotes
Apoc. of Adam, i; cited.
10 1 ; anonymous quotations
in, 88 f.
Baruch, 62, Apocrypha of, 77:
fragments, ib. ; Apoc. of, 103
Basil, Menology of, 70
Bate, H. N., 90 «.
Bee, Book of the (Solomon
of Basrah), 72, 79
Berendts on Zacharias, 74 ff.
Bonwetsch, N., 19, 47, 96
Borborite Gnostics, 7, 8
Bourges Cathedral, 11
Bruyne, D. de, 55
Budge, E. A. W., 74, 86
Burch, v., 31, 84 n.
Burkitt, F. C, 49, 84
Buttenwieser, 60
Caleb, 44, 49
Captivity, story of, 106
Catenae, 46; see Nicephorus.
Cave of Treasures, 4
Cedrenus, G., on Adam, 2;
Seth, 9 ; Moses, 42 ;
Hezekiah, 81 ; story from, 85
Cham. See Ham.
Charles, R. H.. 9, 11, 19, 21,
43, 49 ff., 82 ff.
Chry^sostom, John, 61 ; Ps.-Chr.
See Opus Imperfectum.
Clement of Alexandria, on
Ham, 15; angels, 27; Moses,
43, 44, 48; Ezekiel, 67, 68;
Zephaniah, 72 ; Hystaspes,
93 f. ; anonymous quotations
in, 54, 88, 90 g.
io8
INDEX
Clement of Rome, Epistle, 39,
68 ; anonymous quotations
in, 87 ff. ; story of, 86;
second Epistle, 39 ; anony-
mous quotations in, 88
Clementine Recognitions, 103
Commodian on Lost Tribes,
103 f.
Cyprian on Baruch, 77
Penitence of, 33
Dahnhardt, Natiirsagen, 14
Daniel, Seventh Vision in
Apocalypse, 59, 70 ; Life,
Passion, Dream-book, 70;
LXX version of, 71
Devil, in the Ark, 14; contends
with Michael, 44, 46 ff.
Didymus, 43
Dragon slam by Og, 40 seq.
Durham, MS. at, 95
Eisler, Weltenmantel, 16
Eldad and Medad, Book of,
38 ff.
Elias, Elijah, Apocalypse of,
53 ff., 92; Coptic, 59;
Hebrew, 60 ; legends of, 61
Enoch, Vision of, Armenian,
xiv; Book of, 11, 27, 29;
secrets of, 18
Ephraem Syrus, extract, 34 ff.
Epiphanius on Adam, 7; Eve,
8; Noah, 12; Moses, 48;
Elias, 54 ; Ezekicl, 64 ft. ;
Ezra, 80 ; James, 102
Epiphanius-Ps., Lives of Pro-
phets, 61, 68, 71 f.
Esdras, Apocalypses of, 58,
80, 81 ; 4 Exodus, 64, 79,
89, 101, 103; Esdras, identi-
cal with Salathiel, 79 f. ;
other Apocrypha, 81
Eve, Gospel of, 8
Evodius of Uzala, 45
Ezekiel, Apocryphal, 40, 64,
87, 89, 93 ; death of, 69, 7^
Ezra. 5ee Esdras.
Fabricius, J. A., ix,
Fandana, 98
Fiebig, Gleichnisse, 66
Fire, intelligent, 90 ff.
Gabriel, 76
Gaselee, S., 17 »., 86
Gaster, M., 51, 56
Gelasian Decree, xiii, i, 31,
33. 40
Gelasius Cyzicenus, 43, 51
Georgius Cedrenvis. See- Ce-
drenus.
Hamartolus, 86 n.
— — • Syncellus. See Syncellus.
Germanus of Constantinople,
95
Glycas, Michael, on Prayer
of Joseph, 24
Grebaut, S., 57
Gregory Nyssen, 67
Guerrier Abbe, 57
Gushnasp, 79. See Hystaspes.
Gushtasp. See Hystaspes.
Habakkuk, Apocrypha of, 70
f. ; legends of, 71
Hall, Isaac, 51
Ham, Prophecy of, 15
Harris, J. Rendel, 62, 81, 88
Hell-torments described, 55 ff.
Hermas, Shepherd of, 27, 38,
88, 91
Hezekiah, Testament of, 81 ff . ;
legends of, 85
Hilgenfeld, A., 88, 92
Hippolytus; quoted, 54, 92
Hystaspes, Prophecy of, 93 ff.
Infancy, Armenian Gospel of,
10
Ireneeus, 63
Isaac, Testament of, 17, 91
Isaiah, Ascension of, 24, 49, 54,
82 ff. ; a vision of, 56
Ishmael, R., parable, 66
Isidore, heretic, quotes pro-
phecy of Ham, 15
Issaverdens, translation of
Armenian Apocrypha, xiv,
52, 77. 81
INDEX
109
Jacob, Testament of, 18, <)i ;
I. adder of. k), i)8 ft. ; his
wri'stliiif^, Z2 ff.
J.unes, St., the drcat. Acts oi^
Ascents of, 10^; liookot,
75
Jannes and Janibrcs, Book of,
and l.CRcnds of, 31 If.
Jashar, Book of, H)
Jehudah, R., ])aial)le, (>b
JerahmccI, Chronicles of, 56
Jeremiah, Apocrypha of, 62 ff.
Jerome on Elijali, 53; Jere-
miah, 62 ; Zacharias, 75
Jesus. See Josliua.
jesus Christ, Testaments and
ApociUypse, 07 ff.
loacim, Name of Moses, 48
Joash, I^egend of, 77
Job, Testament of, 93 n.
Jolin Baptist, St., Slavonic
legend of, 76
John Evany;elist, St., spurious
Apocalypse, 58 f.
John, Homilies of, 24
Joseph, Prayer of, 21 ff.
Joshua, 44, 49
Joshua ben Levi, Vision, 56
Jubilees, Book of, 12, 19, 29 f.,
46. 5"
Jude, Epistle, of v, g; dis-
cussed, 46
Justin the (inostic, 77
Justin Martyr, 30, 31, 63, 81,
94
Katherine, St., Acts of, 33
Kemble, J. M., 52
Kitovras and Solomon, 52
Kmosko, 3
Lactantius on Hystaspes, 94
Lamech, story of, 10
Leptogenesis. See Jubilees.
Levi, Testament of, insertions
in, iQ ff.
Life of Adam, 5 ff.
Lightfoot, Bp., 39 f., 103
Lists of Apocr^-pha, xi flf,
Lost Tribes, the, 103 ff.
M.uarius, St., visits tomb of
Jannes, 32
Magi, Legend of, 94
Magical Books, 81, 85
Mambres (Jambres). See Jan-
nes.
Manasseh, story and prayer of,
83 f.
Manicha:!an Apocrypha, 46
Marshall, J. T.. 30
Matthew, St., Prophecy ad-
dressed to, 59; acts of, 105
Mecliithar of Airivank, xiii
Mclchi, name of Moses, 48
Melchizedek, stories of, 17
Michael, 28; and Moses, 43 ff.
Minucius Eclix, 91 ;
Morin, C)., 24
Moscow, MS. at, 96
Moses, Apoailypse of, 42, 51 ;
Assumption of, 27; frag-
ments and reconstruction,
4.^-51; Testament, 42 If . ;
Book of Mystical Words, 51 ;
Eighth Book, 51; Colloqu}'
with God, 51 ; Sword of,
51; Slavonic fJfe of, 47;
story of Magicians and M.,
37 ff. ; names of, 48
Mystery Plays, 13, 14
Nau, F., 2, 57
Newcastle Mystery Play, 13
Nicaea, Acts of Council, 43
Nicephorus, Catena of, 43, 45,
50
Nicephorus Homologeta, 81
Stichometry of, xi ff.
Nicetas of Remcsiana, 3
Noah, Books of, 11, 12, 21
Noah's wife, 12 ff.
Noria, wife of Noah, her book,
12 ff.
Norwich Cathedral, 11
Numenius, 33
Og, Book
40 f.
and Legends of,
no
INDEX"
Opus Imperfectum in Mat
thaeum, lo, 69, 82 ff.
Origen on Abraham, 16
Prayer of Joseph, 21 ff.
James, 31 ; Moses, 43 ff.
Elijah, 53; Jeremiah, 62
Zechariah, 75 f . ; the intelli
gent fire, go
Orvieto Cathedral, 1 1
Pagani, 64
Palcva, the, on Moses, 47;
Jacob, 96
Papyri, 15, 59
Parables, Rabbinic, 66
Patriarchs, Three, Testaments
of, 16; Twelve, Testaments
of, see Twelve.
Paul, Acts of, 94 ; Apocalypse,
69, 73. 74 ; Epistles of,
parallels in Prayer of Joseph,
27 ff . ; Apocrypha quoted in,
31, 42, 53, 62
Peeters, P., 10
Penitence of Adam, if.; of
Jannes and Jambres, 31 ; of
Cyprian, 33
Persia, Wonders in, 102
Peter, Acts of, 67 ; Apocalypse,
28, 55, 88, 91, 92
Pherecydes, 15
Philip, Acts of, 69
Philo, Ps.-, 28, 39
Philostorgius, 32, 34, 58
Pirke R. Eliezer, 27, 28, 92
Pistis Sophia, 2, 90
Pliny, 33
Porter, F. C, 26
Prayer of Joseph. See Joseph.
Prayer, titles of books, 25
Pre-existence, 22 ff.
Procopius on Genesis, 23
Prognostics, Books of, 12 ti.,
81
Protevangelium, 75, 76
Protoplasts, Testaments of, 7
Psellus, Michael, 24
Quaestiones Hebraicae in Para-
lipomena, 39
" Queen Mary's Prayer-book,"
13- 14
Quotations, Patristic, from
Apocrypha, x., 87 fl.
Rabba, Midrash, 27
Raphael, 24
Resch, Agrapha, 54, 87 ff.
Salathiel. See Esdras.
Salomon and Saturn, 41, 52
Samael, 47
Samuel of Ani, xiii.
Sanhedrin, Great, 39
Saphodamuel, Angel, 76
Sarekl, Angel, 28, 97
Sassanidap, Dispute at the
Court of the, 102
Schade, O., 95
Seth, 3, 9 ff.
Severus of Antioch on death
of Moses, 45 ff .
Shem, Book of, 12 n.
Sibylline Oracles, xiv, 12, loi
Silvester, St., Acts of, 63
Sixtus Senensis, 18
Sixty Books, List of the, xi f .
Slavonic legends, 14, 76, 108
Sobach, father of Elijah, 69
Solomon, Apocrypha of, 51 ff. ;
Testament, 28; magical
books and cures of, 85. See
Solomon.
Solomon of Basrah, 72, 79
Sophonias. See Zephaniah.
Sozomen, 77
Steindorff, 59 ff., 73
Stichometries, xi f.
Strasburg MS., 95
Syncellus, Geo., on Adam, 5 ff . ;
Moses-apocrypha, 42 ; Jere-
miah-apocrypha, 62, 63
Tablets of Heaven, 23, 29 f.
Tanchuma, Midrash, 27, 39
TertuUian on Adam, 4 ; Ezekiel,
67 ; Ascension of Isaiah and
Testament of Job, 93 n. ;
anonymous quotations in,
92
INDEX
III
Testaments. See Adam, Pro-
toplasts, Abraham, Twelve
Patriarchs, Patriarclis Three,
Isaac, Jacob, Job, Jesus
Christ, Moses, Hezekiah.
Testament of the Lord, 57, loi
Testament in Galilee, 57
Tcsdmouia, 31, 84 «., 87, 92
Tluickeray, H., 53
Thalkon, Tlialkonagargael, 99,
TOO
Theodotion, version of Daniel,
Thcosophy, the Tiibingen, 95
Timothcus of Constantinople,
40
Titus, Epistle of, 55
Toledo Cathedral, 11
Treves, Latin fragment on
Antichrist, 57
Tribes, the Lost, 103 ff.
Tubal Cain, 11
Tiibingen Theosophy, the, 95
Twelve Patriarchs, Testaments
of the, 19 f., 29 f.
Ulm Cathedral, 95
Uriel, 2, II. 22, 24, 25, 28, 31,
76
Vajoscha, Midrash, 59
Vassiliev, 47
Vincenti, A. von, 52
Wells Cathedral, 1 1
Wesselovsky, 106
York, glass at, 69
Zacharias. See Zechariah.
Zahn, Thcodor, xiii, xiv
Zechariah in Matt, xxvii, 62 ;
Apocrj'pha of, 74 If . ; inven-
tion of, 77
Zephaniah, Apocalypse of,
72 ff
Zerubbabel, Book of, 59
Zoroaster identified with
Baruch, 79
Zosimas, Narrative of, 105
Zoucheof I'arhani, Lord, 51
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